The COVID-19 epidemic is having a fundamental impact on the European cultural and creative industry which is especially true for vulnerable groups like artists with minority background. To reduce the damage and draw attention to the problem, we want to create a cross-sectoral educational cooperation that introduces the culture and art of European minorities (religious, linguistic, ethnic, cultural) to young people through innovative and creative art educational methods. Our project has two main objectives: strengthen the creativity and socio-education of youth with online audiovisual production, and support the minority members of the European cultural sector with creative social media campaigns. We live in a social-media dominated world, which is particular true to the younger generations who were born into the digital world. The youth need to be taught how to orient themselves in this virtual space to acquire life and to be able to create real value in it. The program helps the preparation for innovative digital education under which we place particular emphasis on the development of digital and creative skills and competencies of the participants by tweaking of audiovisual content, refine the specificities of new media phenomena (how to be a value-oriented influencer) with individual needs and the novel use of art education in an online collaboration space. Moreover, the EU is a mosaic of cultures and traditions forming a community of diverse citizens united by their common core values. Every European minority is an integral part of this mosaic; cultural heritage is recognized as an important expression of cultural diversity that deserves protection.Target groups of the project: European youth, people working with youth, European artists or art groups with minority background. Indirect target groups: European minorities, members of the European creative and cultural industry (audiovisual and other), general public. We would like to reach minimum 345 people directly and 5000 indirectly in Europe.The expected objectives of the project:- to strengthen solidarity and tolerance in European youth- to help in preserving the traditions and culture of European minorities and nationalities- to support the European cultural and creative industry with innovative online campaigns and practical creative skills development of youth- to develop a voluntary and self-support online educational network for youth and citizens with minority backgrounds in a long-term- to help educators working with youth to prepare their group members for the global and social challenges in the futureIn order to reach our expected results, partners will create specific EDUfluencer activities and outputs, able to be adapted by any stakeholder, based in the following elements:-EDUfluencer Course for Creativity and Preserving Culture: developing the knowledge and skills of people working with youth in the fields of boosting creativity and social inclusion with innovative art education.-EDUfluencer Minority Culture Descriptor: standardized tool to learn about the culture and tradition of European minorities in detail-EDUfluencer Guidance for Audiovisual Production: to boost quality and innovation of youth work that support the creative potential of youth, and improve audiovisual production skills and competences-EDUfluencer Creative Workshop: put learned theory into practice and test it, creating short videos about local minority artists/art groups-EDUfluencer Public Awareness Campaign: a unique audio-visual based social media campaign utilizing innovative digital technologies designed and run by the young people together with the invited minority artistsRelated activities to test the outputs:-Pilot course for youth workers -Pilot workshops for youthRelated multiplier and cultural events:-EDUfluences Film Festival and Youth Conference (in Hungary)-EDUfluencer National Seminars (in four other countries)With the implementation of the project we expect the following impacts on the various levels:- Enhance social commitment and acceptance of diversity- More resilient and well-prepared European creative and cultural sector- Develop media-literacy, creativity and conscious use of social media- Promotion of equity and inclusion of European minorities

"The lack of effective solutions in access to culture and culture-forming activities by people with disabilities is undoubtedly a problem in modern Europe. There are countries where people with disabilities are still not full citizens due to the lack of solutions enabling active participation in social/ cultural life.In our opinion, the task of the ""Audio description and subtitles against exclusion"" project is to ensure that every resident of countries participating in the project has such right to equality, non-discrimination and active participation in cultural activities that are so important for proper functioning in society. In our opinion, audio description and subtitles for the deaf should be the standard in the functioning of all European cultural institutions. The research carried out by the Centrum Kultury Wroclaw-Zachod shows that despite a clear increase in proposals addressed also to people with disabilities, their number is insufficient. The reason for this is, among others, the lack of qualified staff who would take care of adapting the current offer to the needs of people with sight and hearing impairments. It is known from the survey and environmental interview that program employees of Wroclaw cultural institutions and Lower Silesian centres working with people with disabilities know what audio description and subtitles are. At the same time, they lack the competence and skills to implement these methods in the life of their institutions.The level of culture availability and adaptation of the offer to the needs of people excluded from it is different in different European countries. Western European countries (richer) are characterized by greater program diversity addressed to people with disabilities. Poor countries - Eastern Europe does not apply the principle of availability at all or it is minimal. Our action is a response to the requests and needs of people with disabilities who want to actively participate in society on equal terms. We will implement the ""Audio description and subtitles against exclusion"" project with institutions from Lithuania, Cyprus, Romania and Latvia. Institutions from countries where activities related to the adaptation of the cultural offer to the needs of people with sight and hearing impairments are practically absent.The main goal is to improve the qualifications and skills of the culture employees in creating audio description and subtitles for the hearing impaired, but at the same time adjusting the program offer (by preparing audio description and subtitles) to the reception by the blind and deaf. Workshops on creating audio description for films, performances, visual arts and subtitling will be organized.The implementation of the main goal will consist of a series of intermediate goals;- learning about the environment and the needs of the blind and deaf people. The workshops will also be conducted by blind people and will contain solutions from other countries, e.g. the ""didu"" method from Spain,- acquiring the ability to create programs integrating all groups of participants,- implementing audio description for the blind and subtitles for deaf to their own activities, - improving professional and non-professional skills.The target group are employees of partner institutions. International cooperation will allow the exchange of experiences and good practices, as well as a discussion on the level of culture accessibility in EU countries. The project involves the implementation of four 5-day workshops and study visits1. Audio description in theatre performances (Romania)2. Audio description in visual arts (Lithuania)3. Audio description in film (Latvia)4. Subtitling for films for hearing impaired, theatre performances and television programs (Cyprus)5. Conferences - events disseminating intellectual results6. Study visits The project will open with a study visit in Poland. 25 people will take part in the workshop, 5 people from each partner. They will be employees of cultural institutions, artists. Participation in trainings will enable participants to acquire new competences and skills, and will also allow them to broaden and acquire additional skills, change their professional qualifications and thus expand the cultural offer of their native institution. The knowledge from the workshop will allow the implementation of various artistic events in a comprehensive manner, providing recipients with sight and hearing disabilities on an international level. Extending the current offer with suggestions addressed also to the blind and deaf people will have a positive impact on the audience development and will minimize the effect of exclusion from the society of people with disabilities. The intellectual result will be a textbook containing theory and practical advices on how to create audio description and subtitles for the hearing impaired."

Artists, creators and small cultural non-profit organisations are facing for years an increasing social and economic instability, in most of European countries. The ongoing health crisis due to Covid-19, which makes the cultural sector step into hard times and deep changes, will further weaken their working and living conditions in the coming years. Women, people from less privileged background, from deprived neighborhood, with a migration background or a low level of academic education, are particularly disadvantaged in this situation. Yet their voices, narratives and perspectives are essential to ensuring living democracies, a strong social cohesion and a real cultural diversity. In the same way, cultural small non-profit organisations struggle to sustain a third path between public cultural services and cultural industries. Though, they are essential for the quality of daily life within local communities.To address the problem with a fresh perspective, we built an original partnership, which includes a University, a public enterprise specialized in adult education, and five private non-profit organisations from the arts and culture sector. Our project intends to design and implement innovative methods, contents and tools in order to train our target group in the concepts and issues of current major transitions: social, economic, environmental, digital and democratic. We especially aim to achieve four crucial objectives:- Build innovative approaches, expertise and tools for adult education in the arts and culture sector through the topics of transitions.- Gain a better understanding of the concepts, issues and new models at the heart of current major transitions and their potential of renewing and change making for the professional arts and culture sector in Europe.- Identify in these transitions the levers and opportunities enabling the target group to secure and sustain his activities and design innovative, inclusive and sustainable socio-economic models. - Enable the target group to acquire forward-looking and useful knowledges, skills and tools in order to individually and collectively act for change.Through this international and cross-sectoral cooperation, we will implement several learning and training activities, designed as a social innovation process and gathering around the project many complementary skills and perspectives.UNDERSTAND. A first phase will bring together, after a preliminary research and a needs assessment, 210 participants (target group members, adult education professionals, external experts and various local stakeholders such as academic institutions, local partners, local authorities), through 7 co-creation labs on the topic of transitions in the arts and culture, implemented locally by each partner.ENVISION ALTERNATIVES. Two international peer-to-peer trainings - each gathering 35 participants from the target group and partners organisations - will lead to design collectively innovative frame and contents of the local pilots and of two intellectual outputs : an easy-to-use digital tool kit, supporting the target group to design innovative and inclusive socio-economic models ; a short web serie, highlighting the issues faced by our target group and emphasizing new alternatives to overcome it.ENACT. Through 6 local pilot trainings, we will experiment these new methods and tools with 120 participants from the target group, enhance it through their feedback and hopefully foster the emergence of innovative socio-economic experimentations implemented locally.IMPACT AND DISSEMINATE. We trust that the INPACT project will enhance the personal and professional background of participants and lead them to impulse significant changes in their professional path, activities and organisations. By disseminating a useable and useful digital tool kit and a playful and creative web serie, freely available in 7 languages, we hope to develop the target group’s ability to think and act for change within their professional sector throughout Europe.The active promotion of the “real utopias”, created by participants through the local experimentations, will contribute to open new perspectives to address social and economic difficulties of artists, creators and small cultural non-profit organisations and to spread new narratives about possible and desirable changes within the arts and culture sector. Finally, we hope that the sustainability of the original INPACT partnership and its several local satellites will initiate new alternatives to strengthen the resilience of the arts and culture sector through adult education. The current situation shows us that developing the capacity of individual and organisations to anticipate crises, face its consequences and design innovative solutions to overcome it, are not prospective topics but urgent concrete needs.

CulTrees main goal has been a dynamic and add-on contribution to the educational methodology of Key Competence No 8 of the European Reference Framework (ERF): Cultural Awareness and Expression, in the field of Adult Education.Seven organizations from equal number of European countries, members of the International ROOTS&ROUTES network, cooperated from the beginning of the proposal writing time until the completion of the final report, under the coordination of SMouTh, in order to combine their potential in art education and Adult Education in key competences.CulTrees had set some specific goals:1. The development of a set of training methods and tools that can be used in non-formal education environments, making use of the benefits of peer learning and learning through art making in a variety of artistic expression media (theatre, dance, visual art, literary arts, etc.)2. The development of the teaching skills of professional art educators who participated in the training activities and the enhancement of their personal professional profile, as well as the level of their organization’s involvement in the field of Adult Education.3. The development of the adult trainees’ awareness about the cultural diversity in Europe and the need to be maintained.Each organization of the consortium took part in the project’s training activities with 3 people (21 trainers and education professionals) coming from the fields of performing arts education and adult education. Through the cooperation of the whole team, a 5-days training program was created, implemented in July 2018 in Larissa, in collaboration with the Mayoralty of Culture and Science of the Municipality of Larissa and Unesco’s “Learning Cities” network.In this training program, each participant acted both as a trainer and trainee, leading as a trainer the method he/she had prepared to propose to the group, while being trained in all the other methods, in order to be able to evaluate and use them in his/her own activity framework in his/her country.For the dissemination and promotion of this 5-days training activity in Larissa, a 1-minute video teaser was created, published in all social media and local events related to adult education. Also, a greek-language printed flyer in 500 copies has been distributed to stakeholder local organizations, groups and individuals from the Adult Education sector.The promotion of the activity in local level, besides the dissemination of the project, aimed also at the inclusion of a small number of adult trainees in selected workshops of the five-days Larissa training and their function as a reference group in terms of the needs and interests of the end users of CulTrees outcomes (adult learners). This group took also part in every method’s evaluation round that took place at the end of the workshops, offering valuable experience to the CulTrees team.This experience has been imprinted in the collection of all training tools and methods in a shared “CulTrees Methods Descriptions” document. Each participant developed a detailed description of his/her method in a way that it can be applied by the rest of CulTrees trainers. By doing so, each trainer was initially invited to join the project with 1 method, and finally he/she was given access to a collection of 18 methods to apply in training activities in his/her country.The utilization of the whole of CulTrees methods has been implemented through small scale training activities in each participating country during the final 3 months of the project (Oct-Dec 2018).The participating trainers applied the methods they have been trained at from their peers in corresponding target groups in their countries and they had been asked to describe their experience in the project’s final management meeting in Florence in December 2018.CulTrees activities and outcomes had a particularly positive effect in the professional and educational profiles of the participants, as they focused on the opening of their own and their organizations’ professional involvement in Adult Education, in a concrete and sustainable way. The team’s networking activities in local, national and European level have already created the need to spread the knowledge and expertise developed through CulTrees to other organizations and consortiums, while the team is planning future cooperations in order to positively affect the training methodology in Cultural Awareness and Expression in the field of Adult Education in Europe.

The Partnership for Creativity “OASES for Change – Organising Artistic Self-Empowerment Spaces” will collect, exchange, further develop and disseminate quality criteria, guidelines and tools for organising diversity-aware and diversity-inclusive exchange projects bringing together young people in the medium of arts and creativity. Specifically, know-how for designing environments which, as safe spaces and creation laboratories, – invite young people from different countries, from different social, cultural, religious, socio-economical backgrounds, from diverse genders and sexual orientations, – engage them in collective exploration and discussion of topics relevant to them,– inspire them to collectively create artworks (including performances, movies, installations, digital stories and more) based on the topical work, unfolding their creative potential; and thus– connect them across national and societal border lines, and– support their self-empowerment; by giving them space, by offering constructive guidance by highly skilled educational and artistic professionals experienced in diversity-aware and diversity-inclusive youth work, and by offering them tools, stages and audiences for articulating their artistic and socio-political ideas, visions and demands; – thus, supporting them to become changemakers in their local environments and in a globalised world.We strongly believe in the power of non-formal education projects combining arts and youth empowerment work while taking both aspects seriously: Individual/social/political learning as well as arts and creativity as fundamental ways of expression, communication and being human. We believe in the right of young people to be heard, and we take them serious as artists. Based on these values, organisations in the OASES consortium have been hosting international exchange projects for young artists – “artists” in a wide sense, fostering especially young people with less access to formal or privately paid artistic education – since 17+ years. A lot has been learned and developed during those years, specifically during 65+ international youth exchanges, residencies and seminars hosted within the context of the international ROOTS & ROUTES network, linking 5 of the OASES partners, and connecting contemporary arts with urban culture. We feel it’s time to secure and share the experiences we gained so far; to develop further and share our approaches; and to give international youth exchanges combining serious artistic and socio-political approaches a new boost. We will develop and exchange concepts, procedures and practices in a first phase, culminating in a first international seminar connecting old and new partners. Then, shared know-how will be piloted in international exchange projects. In the final stage of the project, kicked off with a second transnational seminar, we will develop the OASES project results:A. Quality criteria and guidelines for several aspects of hosting, and sending groups to, arts-based international youth exchanges; including: – Artistic and educational standards for inclusive, intersectional and diversity conscious arts-based youth work.– Quality criteria for methods/practices to be used.– Quality criteria for communication with participants and partners, and for physical environments for exchanges (accomodation and working spaces).– Guidelines for host organisations to create inspiring and inclusive environments.– Guidelines for host organisations to create safe spaces, to manage risks and to protect participants.– Guidelines for sending organisations to prepare their participants and group leaders.– Guidelines for debriefing processes after the actual exchange, for both hosts and sending organisations.– Guidelines for reaching and finding participants.B. Tools facilitating hosting, and sending groups to, arts-based international youth exchanges; including:– Suggested processes/structures between partners (from calls for partners, through selection of participants, up to handling financial aspects and travel arrangements).– Templates for calls for project partners, for fact sheets for exchanges, or for Terms and Conditions for Participation (including handling of image rights and authorship/copyright).– Spread sheets for cooking for groups, for making equipment insurances, and for other concrete aspects of hosting youth exchanges.– A few selected practices and methods, focussing on specific steps required for certain exchange formats; like, how to split up a full group into functioning creation groups; or how to develop a big common performance with a large group.These results will be made available online; and will be disseminated through multiplier events and through the general work of the consortium partners, and their communication with their national networks; as well as through the wider work of the international ROOTS & ROUTES network, including the member organisations not involved in this project.