Co-Design is a process involving end-users, customers and other relevant stakeholders in the design process to ensure the outcome meets their needs. Creative Professionals and designers, who want to implement their customer project with CO.Design methods require new skills and competences, which are not trained in the participating organisations and regions so far. That was the motivation for the initiative of six partners committed to supporting the creative industries sector across Europe: Creative Region (Austria), University of Art and Design (Austria), Academy of Fine Arts and Design (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Deusto University (Spain), Creative Industry Kosice (Slovakia) and the European Creative Business Network to create and distribute brand new Co.Design pedagocic materials. Based on an in-depth best practice research on Co.Design good practice in Austria, Spain, Slovenia, Denmark, Slovakia and the Netherlands we developed a Co.Design Best Practice Report in English presenting 25 Good Practices extracted to 8 major findings being integrated in the Co.Design curriculum combining cutting edge design theory with hands-on knowledge and hands-on examples. The course will be accessible for free to any educational institution wishing to implement it in their programme, and will include both study materials and coaching to the teacher. The Curriculum was piloted in a hands-on work based Co-Design training in Austria, Holland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain by trained CO-Design trainers under various socio-economic and socio-cultural context in order to make it broadly transferable to design universities and other design teaching providers. Finally all learning and findings of the Piloting was incorporated in the collection of various CO.Design training materials. In addition to the transferable and adaptable Co.Design Curriculum, we developed a Co.Design TraintheTrainer Handbook, Online Educational Learning Ressources and a CO.Design Essentials. The last one is available in English, German, Slovak, Slovenian and Spanish. All materials are downloadable on www.cocreate.training. The outputs of CO.CREATE empower designers with new entrepreneurial skills in CO.Design, new competences, skills and approaches to do better business, offers them new job opportunities through work based learning and Online learning.

DeuS is a 9-country project promoted by regional VET providers and cultural and creative industries representatives, variously linked to research and technological centres and public players, that even stand for 4 European Capitals of Culture, among past, presents and future designated cities. It lays its groundwork in the Open Design School pilot initiative promoted under ECoC Matera 2019, thought to be an open laboratory pivotal to the successful implementation of the ECoC programme. The project organizes a steady network to challenge the concept of urban sustainable development underpinning the Open Design School. It is in-depth discussed, tested and improved by benefiting from know-how, expertise, best practices and lessons gathered within close and comparable experiences from partners and stakeholders. It strives to enable EU regional environments and research-driven settings – both physical (Creative Open Spaces) and virtual (a multi-sided Creative Knowledge Platform) – that allow VET systems, professionals, researchers, policy-makers and local people to engage in iterative processes of innovation and problem solving to generate solutions to local challenges (RIS3) and deliver them to SMEs and other entrepreneurs, public bodies and everyone who need them. This approach enables educational opportunities in design and innovation, critical thinking and entrepreneurship to find creative and cost-effective ways to connect within and across regional territories. Cooperation and education provide opportunities to access skills, competences and research infrastructures. Players are all involved in feedback-loops allowing creative innovators to be more responsive and attractive. They can iterate, learn, and share with others, feeding innovation. Furthermore, joiners are allowed to assess social needs at local level and iteratively evaluate and improve their solutions by a trail-and-error approach that encourage sharing of lessons learned and best practices.

CRAFT-IT4SD CRAFT-IT4SD (Craft Revitalization Action for Future-proofing the Transition to Innovative Technologies for Sustainable Development) aims to activate the CCSI towards the green transition by building on the rich cultural heritage and strong creative traditions which underpin the European CCSI. It is the ambition of CRAFT-IT4SD to revitalize knowledge, practices and traditional techniques as shared cultural resources for sustainability as well as spillovers into a new, customer driven and sustainable creative economy, allowing for born-sustainable small and micro-sized enterprises to share climate impact data and flourish via an open source and open data platform. CRAFT-IT4SD explores cross-sectoral CCSI innovation through a new ecosystem approach and with four pilot clusters (DK, ES, FI, RO), where regional governance, public private partnerships, entrepreneurial living labs, learning communities, and consumer-engagement approaches support shared experimentation towards the green transition. CRAFT-IT4SD goes beyond the state of art by merging otherwise often siloed CCI sectors, to further articulate a holistic approach, bridging past, present and future design and production opportunities, in the sense that CRAFT-IT4SD - combines techniques, skills and materials associated with traditional crafts with emerging possibilities for integration with new digital technologies and data analytics processes and services; and - adopts a new ecosystem approach to facilitate co-creation between traditional craft stakeholders, the fashion industry, SMEs by designers, artisans, artists through immersive media technologies. CRAFT-IT4SD holds the ambition to replicate insights, learnings and tangible results leading to a CCSI driven green transition – informed by the EIT CLIMATE KIC and inspired by the New European Bauhaus – in other CCSI ecosystems and thus to contribute to the EIT Culture and Creativity KIC, across its Co-location Centers.

PACESETTERS responds to the abstract challenge of the climate transitions by shifting from a model of entrepreneurship based on individual, short-term incentives to one that is driven by co-agency and new capacities to act together in sustainable ways. It does so by examining the concrete circumstances, investigating possible support mechanisms and stress-testing instruments that enable art and culture, creativity and heritage to drive the climate transition. Therefore, PACESETTERS will set out to: -Create knowledge from collaborative research to keep pace with the transition -Propose and test creative business models to set the pace of the transition -Assess strategies of valorisation to push the pace of the transition This approach will identify and analyse advanced practices that run transversally across the cultural and creative sectors; contextualise the outcomes of co-research in real-world laboratories for social imagination; further develop and promote the preliminary results of experiments in iterative support and evaluation frames. The PACESETTERS approach centres on inclusion, participation and iteration in order ensure that gender equity and diversity inform it at every step and on every level. The result will be a critical evaluation and all-encompassing demonstration of the actual potentials of the CCIs to drive the climate transition while systematically analysing their impact on micro-, meso- and macro-level: -Understanding the climate transition as a triple transition: green, digital and inclusive -Innovating aPACESETTERS responds to the abstract challenge of the climate transitions by shifting from a model of entrepreneurship based on individual, short-term incentives to one that is driven by co-agency and new capacities to act together. It does so by examining the concrete circumstances, investigating possible support mechanisms and stress-testing instruments that enable art and culture, creativity and heritage to drive the climate transition.

InnoCreate is an ambitious coordination and support action aiming to stimulate the growth of the creative industries in Europe by overcoming challenges at individual SME level (small size, problems with access to finance, barriers to new market entry…), at the innovation support level (disparity in availability and quality of support) and at overall creative industry level (fragmentation, localisation…). InnoCreate will respond by networking innovation support players and harnessing their regional strengths into a European ecosystem of supports to respond more effectively to SME needs. Two specific end user groups of SMEs will be targeted through InnoCreate: creative industry SMEs exploiting advanced technologies and ICT SMEs innovating in the field of creative industries. Both of these target groups will be equally supported. SMEs will benefit from an imaginative programme of communication and support actions: InnoCreate will piggy-back on the Creative Business Cup to raise awareness about the ICT Challenge competition, network SMEs throughout Europe at the InnoCreate International Camps and provide customised one to one supports for the most promising SMEs with high growth potential. InnoCreate galvanises existing structures by bringing together three strong existing European networks – EBN, CKO and the ECB Network and a network of innovation multipliers at regional level. The InnoCreate service offering aims to be immediately accessible online and ‘on-site’ in 15 EU partner and associate partner countries with a target of engaging further stakeholders to deliver the support services in all EU member states by the project end. The impact of InnoCreate will be tangible – for individual SMEs, for innovation support actors and for the growth of the European creative industries as a whole.