<< Background >>Seeing how the free-scene increases its importance within the artfield due to the changing conditions of work and production, a shift of paradigm in higher art education needs to be discussed. While self-reliance and artistic skills are sufficiently met, the work on sustainability and diversity, including their conditions and prerequisites, can be better reflected in the curricula. How can institutions develop forms of education that remain open to change, while fostering market competencies and promoting a constructive and critical attitude? Institutions tend to encapsulate themselves. Durational cross-national projects can allow for a better outlook and serve as a leverage to open up scopes, point out opportunities and challenges, break down barriers and bring about critical positions. With this project we want to give an insight into the dynamic interplay between existing institutions in the European art and education landscape and into the structuring influences that actors in this field can provoke, by reflecting working processes in dance and music, their possibilities and requirements.RELAY address the following three needs: 1. How can globalisation be lived as a way to collaborate and connect while respecting regional particularities? RELAY puts attitudes and practices at stake in order to bring about answers to this question with the assumption that cross-national exchange is key to diversity.Conditions, structures and mentalities across Europe are diverse, which we see as a great potential. The project embraces complexity, diversity, situated knowledge, differences and similarities alike. 2. The need to counter the crisis of democracy (populism, media manipulation and autocracy) through intelligent designs of collectivity, using choreography/dance and music as a source for method-making skills.We identify a vast potential in artistic, collaborative and educational practices in dance/choreography and music/composition to become a source of innovation in project management and communication in other fields such as science, social structures and education. Performing artists and musicians manage to handle changing work methods and environments virtuously, and bring about solutions for dynamic ways of processing. RELAY serves as a laboratory to push these skills forward, claiming responsibility to contribute to socio-political changes. 3. The need to find sustainable modes of working and traveling. The project aims to create a best practice model for environment friendly logistics and methodologies. We feel the need to take concrete responsibility regarding climate friendly traveling, as there is still too few actions taken. While implementing sustainable modes of traveling, we test, evaluate and eventually integrate the findings into production processes in and around our organizations. Furthermore, being confronted with a frightening increase in numbers of mental health issues, and a vast number of artists living and working in precarious conditions, we transpose sustainability applied to modes of traveling to modes of working alike. We acknowledge a need for balance of work and health and consider the implemented activities in regard to this matter as a concrete testing ground to propose sustainable modes of working in and also beyond this specific project.<< Objectives >>RELAY has the following three objectives: 1. To generate artistic materials and expressions by investigating the relationship between immaterial and material aspects of choreography/dance and composition/music. By doing so RELAY aims to contribute to existing knowledge in the field and potentially strengthen the position of choreography and composition in particular, and art in general, as a source of innovation. This objective trusts art to bear great innovative potential that may contribute to other fields, despite its own existence on the edge of public attention. 2. To develop and promote new modes of collaboration. The construction of hand-overs between the institutions, and between the participants, will create space for individual and dynamic forms of project management. RELAY will allow each institution and each participant to engage with the project in the best possible way, following their needs and capacities. By acknowledging the specificity of each partner and participant, RELAY raises awareness of local contexts and situated knowledge. 3. To critically assess ways to sustainably maintain transnational collaborations by integrating traveling as part of the collaboration. The longer on-ground travel time is seen as a specific form of work time that is documented and shared throughout the project ́s network. This objective aims to close the gap between artistic practice and the travels it engenders<< Implementation >>Several activities will be implemented. Regular ONLINE project meetings will take place, as preparations for Learning, Teaching, Training activities (LTTs), in order to progress and report on project results and to connect participants between the LTTs to pass on knowledge. There will be 5 LTTS that assemble participants from all partners, both students and mentors and also include invited lecturers. Each partner will host an LTT that allows them to present their milieu and its particularities in a way that is relevant to their local scenes, giving an insight to the visiting partners into the local workmodes and conditions. The Cologne and Copenhagen events will investigate the reciprocity of form and content. Bucharest will organize an urban camping that focuses on the relation movement/sound through collaborative learning-by-practice into a creation process setting, and the Crete event will explore how material, culture and tangible historical heritage can affect the materiality of dance and music. RELAY will pay great attention to the in-betweens of the events. At the end of each event a time capsule will be produced and passed on to the next event to be opened up and continuously transformed. In addition, the organizer of the following event will pass a message to the previous one. In this sense, each event stays connected to both past and future and creates an over-arching temporality of the entire project. The time capsules will travel with participants or messengers and thus acknowledge the concrete traveling time. Another category of events will be three multiplier events (ME) that reach out to networks and players outside the circle of the partner institutions. The first will be a symposium organized in Cologne on the relationship and in-betweens of content and form in arts and art education. The second will be a conference of International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts (IETM) in Aarhus (DK) implemented in collaboration with Performing Arts Platform and IETM. As the conference gathers a large array of actors in the field, the project's initial results can be presented to a diverse crowd. Montepulcianon will host the third ME that concludes, evaluates and multiplies the project results, especially on the aspects of innovative modes of learning in higher education as well as on the issue of the “green artist” into the student and teachers body of the partner organisations, local cooperating higher education, and adopted by a team of evaluating and multiplying experts from the field.<< Results >>RELAY has two project results: A collectively written and curated ARTicle and a continuously morphing ARTwork that evolves throughout the entire duration of the project. The ARTicle gathers the findings, reflections and insights, as well as perceived obstacles, hick-ups and (creative) failures of the project. The materials will be processed among the participants and be presented in both digital and analogue ways. The ARTwork will be the documentation of the morphing installation that will be part of each LTT and passed on between them through the time capsule. Both results multiply findings related to the project theme and during the MEs they will be promoted to a particularly selected panel of experts as well as to local audiences to ensure that the project findings will be shared efficiently within the international networks as well as to raise awareness towards the results in the local communities of the participating institutions. The modeling of innovative forms of collaboration, including dynamic ownership and leadership training, and models of best practice regarding climate-conscious traveling, holds great potential to be adopted in individual and institutional patterns of organization and action, inspiring and promoting the “green artist” in the student and teachers body of the participating institutions, as well as cooperating higher education partners. Outcomes derive from the project’s events and participant´s individual takeaways and will be transposable to absorbing and adopting structures, such as related organizations in the field. They will find an instant and continuous implementation and feeding back from RELAY´s structure into curricula, staff and student organizations of the participating institutions and also into individual´s ways of organization within collaborative contexts. The events will provoke an infiltration of RELAY´s materials into our institutions while at the same time creating a surface of feeding back and forward into and from external institutions and individuals. A key role will be given to the closing ME in Montepulciano to ensure the sustainability of RELAY´s results and outcomes by inviting european key players that hold the knowledge and infrastructures to provide final critical filters and help shaping things ready to be received by other organisations.

This project is concrete response to the problems specified in D1.1. It aims to reinforce university-industry relationship based on smart (tailored) entrepreneurial approach in HEIs from Eastern Partnership countries and enhancement of students’ and graduates’ competitive intelligence (CI) (behaviours, skills, mindsets) and their ability to create jobs.Outputs:- 9 concepts of hubs at EaPC HEIs;- Improved skills of 130 teachers;- CI programme(CIP) based on MOOCs and 3 new course supports on acceleration, art, digital skills; - Implemented the CIP covering course 1.part 1, course 2, 3 for 540 registered learners from 9 EaCP HEIs and at least 135 online learners registered for CIP covering course 1.part 2, course 2, 3;- 162 practical performance activities with students done by trained teacher;- Enrolled in CIP 27 students will develop open innovations with companies;- 18 best students benefited from internships; -100 students participated in all 3 National Bootcamps;- 18 students benefited from mobility to Pitch competition;- 9 action plans to improve collaboration and communication between HEIs-industry;- At least 20 programmes in which students do not automatically come into contact with entrepreneurial studies(ES) will be revised and adapted to include it;Impact: AT LOCAL LEVELs the involved PC HEIs will directly benefit from: Fostered experience of the teaching staff of the HEIs; implemented new technologies and learning approaches; AT NATIONAL LEVEL updated facilities;Competition; fostered students skills, especially those who do not automatically come into contact with ES; improved quality of educationAT REGIONAL LEVEL is foreseen a common participatory, evidence-based processes following the objectives of the Bologna process and guided by EU partners in order to support the modernization of the EaPC HE systems and development of important area of activities with these partner countries. This proj. proposal can be used as precedent for others

EUROPEAN STORIES is a European project aimed at developing the skills of adults working in the field of participatory, sustainable and inclusive tourism. The project is part of a context of a multiplication of initiatives integrating the inhabitants into the tourist offers. Noting the movements of greeters, many social enterprises offer tourist tours involving inhabitants in precarious situations (job seekers, foreigners), like the Berlin museums which offer guided tours in foreign languages led by refugees.The partners are all involved in the processes of promoting the mother tongues of people whose national language is not their mother tongue. They have all already conducted valuation experiments in - Romani in Bulgaria-Turkish, Romani, Arabic, Portuguese and Italian in France- from Irish Gaelic to Irish.In a context of rising nationalism, xenophobia and glottophobia, the partners see participatory tourism as an opportunity to promote mother tongues and European cultural diversity. The partners are adult education and training institutes, advisory bodies, universities, specialists in tourism and the creative industries.The European Stories project will therefore work to develop the skills of trainers working with residents (artists, mediators, trainers...) by supporting their ability to :- Enhance the languages and stories of the inhabitants in the tourist offers- Train residents to work at the heart of tourist offers (guided tours, digital, culinary, artistic tours...)- Develop the inclusion of foreigners and their employability through these initiatives- Involve residents in the economic models linked to these tourist offers (NGOs, cooperatives, social enterprises)The EUROPEAN STORIES project will develop several types of activities for the development of adult skills and qualifications:- 3 learning activities- Creation of a certificate for the target audiences of the project (adult trainers working to include the inhabitants in the tourist offers of a territory)- 1 Digital platform of technological and economic resources related to the challenges of sustainable and participatory tourism- 4 transnational dissemination events (Bulgaria, Italy, Ireland and France)These activities will bring together the following participants:- Recognised European experts in adult education (mediators, writers, artists, trainers, social inclusion specialists, etc.) (50)- Managers of public and private companies active in the field of sustainable tourism (50)- Specialists in the promotion of mother tongues in social and economic inclusion processes (20)- Specialists in digital tools for the enhancement of tangible and intangible heritage (70)- Specialists in alternative economic models (10 lawyers and economists)- Heads of local authorities responsible for the enhancement of their tangible and intangible heritageThe relevance of the EUROPEAN PROJECT project is based on a formal and non-formal education methodology that favours:- The development of content based on the needs of the final beneficiaries of the project (inhabitants), and concrete experiments on the territories- Cross-fertilization of expertise: tourism and entrepreneurship- The contribution of new technologies to the enhancement of heritage and accessible to residents- The creation of entrepreneurial and economic models that integrate the interests of the inhabitantsThe results and impacts of the EUROPEAN STORIES project will act at all levels, from local to international, but will focus on the qualifications and skills development of the final beneficiaries, often employed on a part-time basis and on precarious or voluntary contracts. The EUROPEAN STORIES project offers tools for :- Consolidation of people working in the sustainable tourism sector in order to effectively promote the employability of participants,- Enhancing the value of the languages and history of the inhabitants, and enhancing the diversity of this European heritage- Use of digital tools by residents- Participation of these inhabitants in the economic models of the companies offering the tourist offers in which they work.These impacts will be disseminated in the networks of tourism (private and public), social and solidarity development, the inclusion of foreigners and creative industries, and local authorities. Our territories are living more and more on an event-driven rhythm, the flow of people is becomingmore complex. The answer proposed by EUROPEAN STORIES aims to act on the enhancement of the cultural diversity of our territories through the empowerment of our populations.