"Textile and clothing sector has traditionally been one of the most important sectors of activity in Europe. In the last decades, the sector of traditional textile and clothing has been shrinking as result of the globalization and of the emerging of new industries in Asia. However, the importance of the sector still remains significant in terms of employment with 3 million jobs in Europe and ponderable GDP (gross domestic product). The emerge of nanotechnology, wearable electronics, digital designing, etc. researches provide new opportunities for development of textiles with advanced properties. The main aim of the project TEXMODA was to develop a massive open on-line course (MOOC) ""Advanced Technologies for Textile and Fashion Industry"" with corresponding Competence profile, Curriculum, Learning materials, which is open to every interested person, however the target audiences of the the MOOC are students at higher education in clothing, textile and fashion departments and recent graduates; SME's employees working in textile and fashion industry; VET graduates of clothing, textile and fashion that want to upgrade their skills and competences. The MOOC is available in www.upvx.es. The course was implemented in English language and translated in five partners languages (Lithuanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek). The MOOC was pilot delivered, with the target to reach an audience from all Europe and not only from the partners’ countries. Geography of students enrolled into the pilot MOOC is very wide and not limited by European countries, there are students from all continents, i. e. also from Africa, Asia, America, Australia. The partners of the project were: Kaunas University of Technology, KTU, Lithuania (coordinator); Technological Educational Institute of Piraeus, PUAS, Greece, which after structural changes changed the name into University of West Attica; AINTEK SYMVOULOI EPICHEIRISEON EFARMOGES YPSILIS TECHNOLOGIAS EKPAIDEFSI ANONYMI ETAIREIA, IDEC, Greece; Universidade da Beira Interior, UBI, Portugal; Universitat Politècnica de València, UPV, Spain; ECOLE NATIONALE SUPERIEURE DES ARTS ET INDUSTRIES TEXTILES, ENSAIT, France; Lithuanian Clothing and Textile Industry Association, LATIA, Lithuania; Hellenic Clothing Industry Association, HCIA, Greece. Participants from partners institutions participated in the Train the trainer course developed during the project. The Multiplier events, organized to promote the newly developed MOOC, were attended by more than 350 participants. Project Logo, website, Facebook profile, leaflets were developed at the beginning of the project. 4 project newsletters were developed and distributed in each project semester (4 numbers in total). Brochure (in English and partners languages), posters, roll-ups were used in various events. Project results were presented in international conferences, fashion and trade fairs, workshops, seminars, summer schools, face-to-face meetings, etc., and published in journals, newspapers, partners institutional websites, etc. The project has a truly European dimension. TEXMODA addresses the need of European HE to open up education, addressing the Communication of the European Commission “Opening up Education: Innovative teaching and learning for all through new technologies and Open Educational Resources”. At national level, the project triggered the participating Universities to build their capacity to develop more massive, open, online courses and open educational resources and to gain expertise in particular field between the partners. The MOOC will be used as a part of courses in Universities curriculum as complementary material. Accreditation process of individual modules of the MOOC has started, however it is a long process. At international level, the project promotes European Higher education institutes to the new world of massive open on-line education and facilitate their internationalization. Collaboration on the project allowed to expand number of contacts at European level meeting new partners."

"“Skills4Smart TCLF 2030” constitutes the first step into a new dynamic sustainable community of diverse private/public actors committed to support skills development and employment opportunities across EU in the Textile, Clothing, Leather, Footwear and Leather Goods sector, which are indispensable to innovate and produce high-added value products.The consortium will build an evidence-based industry-led ""TCLF Skills Strategy"", and during the first four years, partners will work to [a] identify concrete actions, priority activities, and well-defined tools/outputs to anticipate and match skills’ supply with demand; [b] improve skills intelligence and information mechanisms by creating networks and partnerships; [c] update/enhance the attractiveness of the sector to engage newcomers, families, companies, and policy makers at regional, national and EU levels, and [d] identify funding opportunities and engage regions and other stakeholders to ensure the long-term sustainability of outcomes and further implementation of the strategy.Activities will create tools for skills anticipation and new curricula/qualifications by [a] sharing/integrating existing VET and skills knowledge/best practices to provide a pool of tools, research, innovative learning methods suited to new generations; [b] designing 8 new transnational VET profiles and respective curricula and training programmes focused on digitalisation, sustainability and KETs to better suit companies’ needs and global opportunities. Such profiles and programmes, in line with EQF/ECVET, will be piloted and validated by national VET recognition bodies. An EU Fashion Virtual Campus will be the operational and living hub, sharing project’ outcomes, and other useful education/ employment data in a second phase, to attract and orientate newcomers, strengthen VET, research, and industry partnerships, and nurture all TCLF stakeholders throughout EU to consolidate/enhance TCLF skills excellence for the creation of jobs."

TCBL uses Europe’s Textiles & Clothing (T&C) industry as test beds for evolutionary-driven co-design, dynamic optimisation and deployment of business models. It aims to increase the performance of a sector that, over the past two decades, upheld three main strategies to handle global competitive pressure: cost-oriented, product/service-oriented and productivity-oriented. TCBL provides a business experimentation framework for exploring variations on such strategies. The framework will be supported by Knowledge Spaces as a generative force and Business Services as an enabling force. A network of Business Labs will be set up, based on three key variations: Design Labs (e.g. creating emotionally-oriented immaterial value), Making Labs (e.g. converting skilled labour into material value), and Place Labs (e.g. generating spatial community- and socially- oriented value). Each of these Labs will explore the issues of cost, product/service and productivity enhancement in a transversal manner and from cross-disciplinary perspectives - including economic, anthropological, and engineering approaches as well as new business values such as environmental and social responsibility, sharing economy, social enterprising, customer-driven small series production (the focus of this call) and emergent or disruptive technologies. With these tools, and supported by an open Associates Programme, TCBL will carry out real-life experimentation and market deployment of a number of Supply Chain, Localisation, Business, Skill Management and Policy innovations involving no fewer than 160 workshops, laboratories and manufacturing plants at EU level with at least 15,000 T&C workers involved. In addition, 10 new innovative companies will be generated within the supply chain of T&C, enabling the diffusion and scaling up of results. By so doing, a knowledge based, transformational ecosystem will be developed, integrated into an open, yet structured platform environment.

Knowledge-driven global economies demand more emphasis on social inclusion, social equality and engaging society in research and innovation processes to generate solutions responsive to societal needs. Such aspirations can only be achieved through open collaborative, cooperative engagement between quadruple helix (QH) actors in any given society. The foundation stone of developing such a socially aware entrepreneurial society is: Education. To fulfil these goals, the European Corporate Social Entrepreneurship curriculum (EMBRACE) project, resulting in EMBRACEedulab, will (i) establish, within the framework of the Social Business Initiative, a favourable climate for all QH actors to be actively informed of the need for Corporate Social Entrepreneurship. This will be achieved through the consortium’s unique horizon scanning mechanism that identifies disruptive technological and societal trends; (ii) co-design, co-create, co-develop and co-implement an innovative, multidisciplinary European Corporate Social Entrepreneurship Curriculum (ECSEC) to be incorporated into HEI education programmes across all disciplines. The output of which will be more rounded, employable graduates capable of contributing immediately to their employers’ intrapreneurial and social responsibilities, and (iii) establish a sustainable environment that facilitates the co-creation and exchange of knowledge between HEIs and enterprises; resulting in the creation of new business opportunities addressing societal needs.Together, these will generate a scheme of transversal skills learning and application throughout HEIs which are transferable to industry/business communities – the EMBRACEedulab. The legacy, therefore, of the EMBRACE project is the multidisciplinary EMBRACEedulab - a set of tried and tested educational programmes and stakeholder collaborative engagement methodologies and methods to facilitate embedding Corporate Social Entrepreneurship within regions.

The European textile industry has always been keen to preserve representative examples of textile production of the past, either for creative or for educational purposes. Numerous collections of antique and exotic textiles, today preserved in museums, have come from the private collections of textile entrepreneurs or industrial institutes and schools. Many firms have also acquired whole archives or textile samples from other sources.Over the last few decades, the economic crisis which has affected the European textile sector has resulted in the loss of many textile archives. Indeed the failure of businesses and the consequent closure of their warehouses has caused the loss of hundreds of textile samples and designs. In order to avoid breaking the line of continuity which joins past and future textile production - a fundamental feature of European excellence in the fashion sector - it is necessary for museums, cultural institutions and textile companies to protect our textile heritage.The project objective is to both to contribute to the protection and exploitation of the fashion Cultural Heritage and organize and structure it in vocational training courses for the improvement of EU fashion designers (Fashion designers working in T&A Industries and young fashion designers). The purpose of the developed curricula is to train EU fashion designers to improve their designs and achieve an increased added value of their garments, by achieving precious knowledge about the past and current state of fashion. Work-based training ICT tools based on fashion cultural heritage is missing from European fashion industry which needs inspiration and learning from a glorious past in order to add value to its products and boost its competitiveness internationally. The platform created encompasses design skills, concentrating information and digitalized material from the Prato Textile Museum. More specifically, the results reached out by the project can be summarize as follows:1. The enhancement of knowledge, skills and competences of fashion designers. This result is achieved taking into account the several people involved in the project, either during the multiplier events and in the different opportunities where the project was further disseminated.2. The engagement of fashion industry personnel in the lifelong learning in a non-formal, business setting, based on experiential, work-based, problem-based and self-directed learning, and a learning outcomes approach. Many designers, students and young professionals have now the opportunity to further explore the ART-CHERIE platform and develop their skills in a continuous way.3. The definition and development of a Curriculum for the VET as an European Standard, including a qualification framework. The curricula framework developed throughout the project duration is a self-learning curriculum (7 ECTs) focusing on the professional designers or students in their last year of their BA education. It represents about 80% of what would be required to conform with 7 ECTS. Moreover, partners also developed 2 training courses - womenswear and embroidery, freely accessible in the ART-CHERIE platform.4. The establishment of a digital training platform, bringing together fashion designers across Europe, provide online training and facilitate dissemination of knowledge and sharing of experience. In a moment where Digitalization is key for the T&C sector, the ART-CHERIE platform is a good example of how T&C professionals can have free access to digitalized materials and information to further develop their own activities and creations. It is also important to mention that SMEs can benefit from this project by modernising their activities through the use of a high quality ICT Tool and being more inspired by the large Prato T&C heritage digitalized (not completely) in our platform.5. The improvement and extension of high quality learning opportunities tailored to the needs of fashion designers, operating within the entire spectrum of fashion industries. Both the curricula framework and the courses available in the ART-CHERIE platform constitute a good source of learning activities for T&C professionals. In terms of its content, it is important to mention that it has been managed by the entirely partnership, including the industry representatives (EURATEX and HCIA).6. The achievement of an effective and tangible quality development of EU fashion industry’s competitiveness and internationalisation of their work and personnel.The project involves 5 partners from 4 EU countries, all with a long established vocation on T&C productions and a significant tradition in design and creativity. Coherently with the nature of the project, the partnership is composed by Business Associations, T&C museum, organizations supporting T&C businesses, University and NGO active in ICT technological tools development.