Project „European Theatre Technicians Education“ While cultural activities are often performed at an international level, the qualification and education occur on different levels in different countries. Therefore this project has been focused on institutions that are teaching future specialists of theatre, stage and event technology. The objective was to determine the aspects of the professional qualification relevant to health and safety and to develop an internationally comparable level and standards. The partners having taken part in the project are the professional organizations Deutsche Theatertechnische Gesellschaft (DTHG) e.V. (Germany), Vereniging voor Podiumtechnologie (The Netherlands), STEPP vzw (Belgium) and Svensk Teaterteknisk Förening (Sweden) and as professional partners on this area OSAT - stichting overleg onderwijs arbeidsmarkt theatertechniek (The Netherlands) and the Erasmushogeschool Brussel with its Kenniscentrum Podiumtechnieken RITS (expertise center for the technical performing arts) (Belgium). The partners provide a good platform since in their countries the vocational education in the area of event technology is based on similar views and traditions. The project has included the following steps: 1. An agreed description of 10 basic health and safety competences has been developed. These have been written independent of language, local context and technology and are related to the ESCO taxonomy and the different national systems. The ten competences are: 1.Work with respect for own safety.2.Contribute to a safe and sustainable working environment.3.Work ergonomically.4.Use personal protection equipment.5.Work ergonomically.6.Work safely at heights.7.Work safely with mobile electrical systems under supervision. 8.Work safely with tools.9.Work safely with chemicals. 10.Fit up and rig performance equipment. One could argue that there are more competences all workers should have, but there are reasons to limit the choice. The selection was made based on two criteria: •The choice of competences should not conflict with national or EU legislation. We excluded competences that have certification requirements in some countries. •The chosen competences should not be part of a specialisation or a field. We only included competences that are required in (almost) all stage occupations. 2. To be able to train practitioners in their working environment, open Educational Resources for the competences have been developed. The resources can be used in collective education and training as well as in individual or online learning. They are available in the 3 project languages and English. The resources are the ETTE handbook including the ten competences with descriptions and all important content to be known, exercises, links to sources for further reading etc. There are a students' and a teacher's/assessor's version available. The latter contains examination questions and proposals to integrate the ETTE content into lessons, too. The material is available as eBook for downloads from the ETTE website and as printed versions. 3. The project has developed a one-week 'train the trainer' program for the agreed core safety skills. This includes methodology, background knowledge and tools. It is meant for trainers as well as coaches in the work environment. The train the trainer program will be continued in the different countries. 4. A set of agreed standards for assessment of the core skills / competences has been developed, including procedures for testing and quality control. The standards are written in a way that they can be imbedded in the different national systems. The content is available as an assessors guide. 5. By working together, a permanent network between the partners and their stakeholders in the different countries has been developed. It will continue and form an ETTE consortium. 6. To support the previous actions and to disseminate the results the ETTE website contains all developed content in all project languages and English. The competences are connected with an online learning platform. An exchange platform for teachers and professionals has been created in the forum on the ETTE website. The group of stakeholders continues to work together, will enlarge and keep the platform alive. Dissemination has been started parallely to the project's running time in a lot of presentations of the project to relevant target groups on important fairs, events, sector gatherings etc. (despite the budget for multiplier events had been canceled). During the project the website has been regularly updated with results, materials, reports etc. . The partner organizations promote the ETTE project via their social media platforms, especially Facebook.

The acronym TeBeVAT 2 stands for “(Teil-)zertifizierung im Berufsfeld Veranstaltungstechnik“ – which means “(partial) certification and/or validation of informal learning in the vocational field of event technology”. To understand the research interest of the project, the topic must be regarded in relation to its political background: The European Strategy 2020 aims at sustainable growth, inclusion as well as a transparent and stable labour market within the EU. To tackle current challenges of e.g. demographic change, digitalization, and immigration, a large package of measures to improve the labour market situation has been discussed. The strategy promotes transferability of skills between companies and sectors, also with the aim to facilitate mobility on the European labour market.One approach to achieve these goals is to include citizens without formal education and qualifications into the labour market. The vocational background of these individuals is often marked by informal learning. This is learning resulting from daily activities related to work, family or leisure. It is not organized or structured in terms of objectives, time or learning support (compare Cedefop, 2008). The outcomes of informal learning and the competences that a person acquired thereby, may be validated or certified (also compare Cedefop, 2008). This means that prior learning experiences are accredited by running through a formal process. It brings prospects of enhanced employability to workers that are currently excluded from the job market. New job opportunities are opened up to individuals that did not complete formal education in their field of labour (like career changers). This approach may in addition have an important impact on addressing skill shortages in fast growing industry sectors and supporting economic growth. Therefore, the European Commission issued recommendations for the validation of non-formal and informal learning in 2012. In the countries, national strategies should be developed.The overall goal of the project TebeVAT 2 was to develop such a strategy for the validation of results stemming from non-formal and informal learning for the industry sector of event technology. Funded with support of the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union, the team with partners from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and UK compared existing national practices and consolidated them in the TeBeVAT approach. The sector of event technology was chosen because it is a prototypic example for an industry field with high numbers of career changers and workers without formal education. There is high mobility and a lot of cross-border employment due to the big productions and shows gathering multinational teams of workers from all over the EU.

"The European Council stipulates transparency in the labor market. Especially non-formal and informal learning outcomes have to be formally recognized in a validation process. The majority of project partners have been dealing with the labor market and European transferable educational content in the field of ""Event Technology"" in two previous EU projects. By means of a “Competence Matrix” they managed to establish European comparability and transferability. In the labor market, there are many people entering the sector of “Event Technology” different from their educational or professional background. Although acting practically and solidly, they do not have any formal degree – with the resulting legal consequences, for example limited and restrictive insurance law and disciplinary consequences. This group of people is exemplarily fed to a validation process in all participating countries (DE, NL, UK, LI, AT ). A diagnostic tool will be developed and a way of formal recognition of the learning outcomes will be identified by investigating a small group of practitioners in each country using the diagnostic tool. The results will be presented to experts from institutions of formal recognition asking them under what circumstances they are willing to recognize this formally within their vocational training legislation. At the same time, the partners investigate in their national context to what extent these results are to be recognized transnationally. This can also lead to part recognitions. Based on the partner’s profound knowledge of the profession, the processes at the labor market and the framework of the formal examination institutions, satisfactory results will be elaborated. It will be investigated how to create confidence and appreciating the practicability of validation amongst formal certifiers by using a solid diagnostic tool. The project aims to demonstrate a method, which enables a mutual recognition of non-formal and informal learning outcomes. The project team assumes that the exemplarily investigated participants can obtain a formal (partial) recognition and that overall the process of validation continues in the among experts itself. Finally, an international project presentation will be prepared in order to present the results to the guests and representatives from Europe during a conference at the University of Bayreuth.A detailed work concept on behalf of the partners and a controlled reporting of the interim results will guarantee a targeted process of the partnerships. The publication of the diagnostic tool in relevant media and the further support by the coordinator BF/M-Bayreuth at the University of Bayreuth, together with long-term advice to stakeholders from other professional fields, will encourage the European Council’s recommendations and promote long-term validation."

<< Background >>While trying to plug gaps in our national VET landscape at EQF levels 4 and 5, it became increasingly clear to us that a truly European scope would make our project better and more generally useful, and that much insight is to be gained from looking at other countries and their best practices in engineering and education. Particularly so because sound engineering requires a complex mixture of STEM, artistic, and inter-personal skills, which have proven time and again to be quite elusive to teach effectively, and some countries have already covered a lot of ground in this area.We want to provide new, European career trajectories in sound for aspiring event engineers in an industry that is still very much relying on informal and self-learning, We intend to improve the quality of sound engineering education and ultimately deliver an even better experience for the event-going public and the artists performing for them.<< Objectives >>We are creating a European Sound Specialist qualification at EQF level 5 for the live event industry that can be easily implemented nationally and recognized internationally. Our goal is to address the shortage of such personnel on the current labor market, and to counteract the exodus of qualified specialists in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis to other industries.In doing this, we want to fill existing gaps in VET in the field of live sound engineering, develop and improve sound engineering education, and foster trans-national worker and student mobility as well as intercultural skills.Moreover, we want to forge a strong network of event industry organisations for future cooperation, and generally encourage a European perspective on our industry among our members and stakeholders in general.<< Implementation >>Over the course of the project, we will conduct several project meetings in all partner countries, to gain insight into the best practices, work environments and challenges of our European neighbours in our field.To disseminate the project results in our industry, we will host multipliers featuring presentations and discussions of our results, usually co-located at major industry events to maximise impact. After completing our results, we will be reaching out to interested VET providers to facilitate implementations of the European Sound Specialist qualification.<< Results >>We will be issuing three written results, two of which are surveys of the current state of specialist sound education and the demands for sound specialists respectively. The third one will be a comprehensive curriculum and teaching manual for the European Sound Specialist (ESS), based on the lessons learned in compiling the previous results.We expect the ESS qualification to be adopted on a national level, initially by the countries represented in this project and later by others, and for those implementations to be mutually recognized.We hope that our network of project partners will lead to future cooperation and be strengthened by additional formal and informal partnerships in the future.