The name “Mind Over Matter” symbolizes the humankind’s aspiration to create a better world. STEAM, as a means to truly shape the world in a positive way, is perfect as a medium, as it shapes young minds so that they can use their creativity and intellect to transform the matter into something that is useful, sustainable and adds value to the world. The MoM project identifies and leverages the opportunities inherent in STEAM educational activities that will engage and inspire young people to follow STEM pathways through education and into both STEM and new emerging STEAM careers. We distinguish between these two in the following way: STEM encourages deep specialisation within a scientific discipline. STEAM educational activities integrate the Arts and creativity with a broad range of sciences in an interdisciplinary approach that draws knowledge from across a diverse range of expertise. This creative combination allows young people who might not immediately self-identify as a candidate for a STEM pathway to have a positive experience of STEM subjects in the context of something that more readily captures the imagination, and is project and goal-oriented than detail-focused. This can then lead to a growing interest in a STEM specialism or further work in a STEAM-oriented career.Therefore, the first objective is to develop hands-on, inquiry-based approaches to education which will demystify science and scientific processes in order to increase young people’s confidence in approaching STEM. In order to achieve it, partners will implement analyses of best practices existing on EU level and define improvement that has to be implemented according to the relevant researches. Analyses will define the methodological approach that has to be implemented when creating STEAM activities in order to attract young people who aren’t interested in STEM fields. The methodology developed will be based on an environment conducive to high youth engagement, an investment from the youth in their learning, problem solving in the context of the real world, and a non-traditional format where the educator facilitates the development of ideas without being prescriptive.In order to test the developed methodology, 40 STEAM pilots will be developed and tested with 500 young people in online and offline environment. The main target group are young people, 13 to 18 years old, divided into age groups 13 to 15 and 16 to 18. The selection will be implemented in a way that young people who are generally less interested in STEM careers and education will be invited to attend the education (around 80% of young people not so interested and 20% young people interested in STEM). STEAM pilots will be based on a problem connected to SDGs that participants will address in teams using available equipment and materials The proposed methodology will not have a pre-set prescribed outcome, but will instead enable participants to collaborate on a variety of innovative solutions. Teams will present solutions to each other, thereby multiplying the learning outcomes across the group. Their confidence and interest will be measured at the beginning of the educational activities and at the end in order to prove if the pilots had impact on their educational and career considerations. It is expected that 10% of participants will report an increase in motivation and confidence in pursuing STEM and STEAM careers. That will impact the second project objective, which is to sustain the interest of youth in STEM and STEAM carriers. Besides the youth enrolled in project activities, through intensive dissemination activities we will reach other young people. For it, we will use videos of STEM and STEAM experts from the business sector, policy-makers and young people enrolled in STEM education and careers. The aim of the campaign is to send a message that young people can become STEM and STEAM experts regardless of their current perceptions of what STEAM is. We will demonstrate the different educational and career paths that STEM and STEAM experts had, allowing some to recognise themselves in those experts. An evaluation of the proposed methodology will result in detailed methodology guidelines that will be disseminated with the pilots toward educators from formal and non-formal education contexts. They will be provided with materials developed and supported in the process of testing either existing pilots or in the creation of new pilots. That will give the consortium the opportunity to test the methodology in different environments. We will communicate the project results to the Ministries of Education and Youth in order to raise questions about the existing STEM education implemented in the formal education system and its possibilities for improvement using the developed methodology and pilots.

<< Background >>The Open Minds consortium has identified a need for radically inclusive and innovative approaches to education in the Covid era and beyond. These approaches must support the upskilling of all young people, foster resilience and address societal challenges at both a local and international level, and allow for the creation of an inclusive and transnational European network of creative youth. They must tackle the challenges of travel restrictions and health precautions while allowing for the transnational meeting of minds for which Erasmus was created. It is particularly critical that no perspective and no contribution is excluded when addressing the increasingly urgent societal challenges facing Europe’s young people, and so the consortium has embraced the strategy of ‘radical inclusion’, rather than simply following a compliance approach to making participation accessible. Radical inclusion ensures participation by those whose voices often go unheard - particularly those young people living with disabilities, and whose contribution is often excluded or overlooked. The societal, environmental, political, economic and technological issues facing Europe all have an important cultural dimension, and it is by centering culture and creativity, as well as the affordances of new technologies to solve the issues preventing inclusion.<< Objectives >>Open Minds creates a transnational European youth network of creative problem solving, addressing diversity, social innovation, inclusion and accessibility. The project innovates a methodology to synchronise young minds from diverse European locations and the Western Balkans region around grand challenges. By co-creating simultaneously, both in person and online, young people act in synchrony, bounce ideas back and forth across cultural, geographical and economical divides, and co-create solutions in real time. Open Minds does not simply provide tools for online learning, but cross-fertilises the learning experience for young people across Europe. These moments of revelation about each other’s contribution to solving challenges propose a new mission for Erasmus: Synchronising bright minds across Europe.The consortium of the Open Minds project sees the cultural core value – creativity – as the driver of change that can support and develop local communities in response to grand challenges. By developing an innovative methodology and technological infrastructure for working with young people in the Covid era, Open Minds explores both local and international creative collaboration to address social inclusion, resilience, upskilling and sustainable development. Open Minds aims to shift the core focus from physical travel to synchronising young minds from diverse European locations around great societal challenges. The objective of the Open Minds project is to create the foundations for development of highly inclusive local ecosystems in Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Croatia and Albania by innovating methodology for radical inclusion of disabled youth through arts, culture and technology.<< Implementation >>In order to achieve the objective, the partners will build upon their extensive experience in using technology, arts and culture as a means of achieving social inclusion for different excluded groups in order to facilitate radical inclusion for young, creative disabled people. The project includes a co-creation process with young people with disabilities to develop a methodology, transferable pedagogical toolkit and learning path through practical collaborative innovation and case study research aimed at identifying exclusion factors in local communities and collection of digital assets used for presenting identified societal challenges. The developed educational path will be tested on 200 young people and 30 youth workers with a background in arts and culture and/or technology and 28 young disabled creatives. During the education, young people and youth workers will define 30 challenges for which they will build social innovations that address issues of inclusion and accessibility in their local ecosystems during the Creative Innovation Labs (CIL). For the CIL, local participants will be involved physically in one place (one Satellite Lab) and will have a direct window between the simultaneous Satellite Labs in Umeå, Zagreb, Tampere, Tirana and Porto. Participants will jointly experience inspirational talks and brainstorming session, and innovation building teams will be self-organised by interest rather than location, allowing for teams to gather either locally (all team members in the same Satellite Lab) or remotely (members from 2 or more Satellite Labs). The environment for testing the developed methodology will be instrumental to the multinational collaborative co-creation and co-design that supports the development of inclusive and accessible local communities. Innovations created during the CIL will be further developed in the incubators hosted by partner organisations with ongoing remote collaboration of young people, youth workers and young people with disabilities. It is expected that 20 innovations will be developed through a process of mentorship in order to be used to achieve radical inclusion of youth in the local ecosystem. The developed methodology will be evaluated and its piloting in 5 local ecosystems will be explained in detail in a Best Practice Rulebook. The aim of the Rulebook is to be adopted and used by newly established Satellite Labs in local ecosystems to extend the impact of the project far beyond the reach of the partnership and funding.<< Results >>Open Minds is created to be highly re-usable and its impact extends far beyond the tangible outputs of the consortium activities. It is designed as a multiplier for social inclusion, transferable innovation methodology and toolkit for local community ecosystems, a generator for new business ideas and learning paths for young people as well as an engine for social cohesion and resilience in Europe and between the EU members and the Western Balkans region. Open Minds is a methodology that can be shared and used for radical inclusion to address geographical and social obstacles and to both reveal and tackle the structural and systemic nature of a wide range of disabilities. In addition, while the methodology builds on the affordances of available new technologies, it is not dependent on any particular technology. Rather, it is equally applicable to existing technologies and to technologies that are yet to be developed. It is an innovation methodology that brings together diverse creative minds in a way that iterates on its form, and so improves and adapts in every context it is deployed. Open Minds is not imagined as a two year project in the traditional sense that would see it come to an end after the funded activities. It is proposed as a two year development and delivery of a methodology that can be shared, built upon and grown long beyond the life of the project.