Newsletter #5

CLOSING THOUGHTS ON THE P4CA PROJECT

As the project enters its last month, the team of P4CA reflects on the accomplishments, learnings, and challenges of these past two years. Here are a few words collected from each partner on their individual experience.

Concluding words from Trevor Burgess, project leader

“The P4CA partnership has demonstrated great resilience and team working during an unprecedented global crisis. The Covid19 pandemic intervened within 6 months of starting the project. It created a paradoxical situation. For two years we were isolated, working from home, unable to meet or travel. Apprenticeships and work-based learning in the creative industries shut down. Yet the crisis provoked us to work together transnationally in virtual digital space more intensively and in new ways. It’s been an accelerated learning process. Long Zoom meetings. Exploring new digital tools for learning and collaborating online. These enabled us to continue to develop the project outputs in ways that we could not have imagined before. But they took place in a virtual  bubble. Once we could finally travel and meet again face-to-face in the last 6 months of the project, it became clear how much had been missing in a project that has at its heart the process of cultural exchange. So, a lot has been compressed into the final stages of the project. It’s been intense: we have understood better, we have resolved problems, we have re-thought approaches, and we have strengthened our collaboration. And we have begun to reach back outwards to re-discover a changed landscape of work-based learning in the creative and cultural industries. We had precious little time to effectively validate and strategically embed the project results in the industry and VET sector, where there is so much to be done to adapt training to the massive changes to work practices in the sector and increase access for young people to the career opportunities it offers. That is the challenge for the future that we discussed in our final meeting and conference in Skopje.”

RINOVA

“The great strength and value of the P4CA project has been in the sharing of experience and practice through the transnational partnerships. The project has exposed not only the great differences in apprenticeship frameworks that exist across different European countries, but also many specific issues that are faced in implementing apprenticeships within the creative industries. The working relationships within the partnership proved resilient and durable through the period of the pandemic. We learnt a lot about working more effectively using virtual tools  but inevitably the level of engagement with the industry was not as strong during a period when much of the sector was shut down. In the final year, we have really valued the depth of understanding and exchange that comes from meeting face-to-face, particularly in the intensive learning and training events. The final conference in North Macedonia showed how our examination of the role of Apprenticeship Coach offers models of development at the level of national cultural policy. Looking ahead, the project points to the need for a more strategic intervention aligning Vocational Educational Training more effectively with the dynamic career opportunities and working patterns of the Creative Industries.”

RDA – REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCY SENEC-PEZINOK

Partnerships for Creative Apprenticeships (P4CA) has given us a great opportunity for cooperation, networking and learning from others, both for individuals (teachers, experts) and organisations (VET schools) that participated in the project on behalf of Regional Development Agency Senec-Pezinok. We are extremely happy and proud to say that we have recently completed our project tasks and in the final phase which was pilot phase testing, we received quite valuable answers that help us to understand project’s strengths and weaknesses from the user point of view. Such feedback we consider as a good starting point for a possible follow-up project where we would like to see better link between P4CA project’s results and apprenticeship programmes in the area of creative industries in Slovakia. Hopefully we will manage to make it happen.

MATERAHUB

For Materahub, the P4CA experience was very positive and reinforced our link with the schools from our local community but also beyond! Indeed, the project brought new collaborations with the Liceo Artistico of Viterbo in the Lazio region, and we are very pleased to have managed to share the wonderful tools and results of this project at national level. As the P4CA project comes to an end, we continue to utilise the tools and findings gathered during these two years with our network and at regional events for the youth and for schools. We are especially proud of the partnership put together for this project as each partner continued to show support and team spirit even through the many challenges brought these past two years. We are looking forward to continuing this fierce and creative collaboration. 

ARTERIA

Good preparation of young people to start working in the broadly understood cultural and creative industries is one of the topics that the ARTeria Foundation has been dealing with for many years. The implementation of the P4CA project perfectly matched the needs of the labour market and training activities in Poland. Well-prepared apprenticeships connecting young and talented people, especially art school graduates with employers, are crucial for the professional development of artists and representatives of creative industries and the entire sector. This is very clearly visible, especially now when, in the post-pandemic period, the sector is trying to make up for the huge losses of recent years. This will not be possible without the active operation of high-class, well-educated specialists operating in companies and cultural institutions, trainees’ tutors who are the link that integrates the system. And their competences can develop thanks to the materials prepared as part of the project. These materials will certainly be intensively used in the activities of the ARTeria Foundation.

PRESS TO EXIT

For us, our participation in P4CA is significant for the professional affirmation of our organisation for several reasons:

1. Being part of an international consortium of organisations active in the creative cultural sector has been an enriching experience. The collaborative spirit and the collective mindset to do something very democratic and valuable for everyone involved in the non-formal teaching has sustained us and has opened the door for future collaborations.
2. We have learned and matured as a collective, all the while transforming our educational program into an active opportunity through which we have provided evaluation and accreditation opportunities for cultural workers via the CLOCK program.
3. We led the 3rd Intellectual Output that focused on creating a Toolkit, something that was an exciting and challenging process of collaborative editing and curating, but also designing and conceptualising material for six different countries.

In conclusion, P4CA provided us with a real insight into what is needed and how we can supplement the existing legislative and normative accreditation processes in the six countries involved with our original tool kit for educators, mentors, and coaches in the CCI. We thank Renova Ltd. for skillfully leading the project and the National Agency of the United Kingdom for generously supporting the project. We are grateful to have been part of the project, met inspiring people, and established a strong network for future collaborations. 

Hristina Ivanoska and Yane Calovski, co-founders and co-directors of Press to Exit Project Space, Skopje

CULTURAL INDUSTRIE CREATIVE CLUSTER

Apprenticeship was a well-known practice in our Creative Industry Cluster – as we believed before we started the P4CA project. It was an exciting learning process for us and for our cluster members, who understood the “other side” – the apprentices – needs. The personal meetings with project partners at the venues of our cluster members had a measurable impact on their apprenticeship practice. The awareness raising and the available knowledge content help all of us, even the experienced apprenticeship coaches. 

The great teamwork and the finally available personal team meetings were a huge added value to the project, which motivated us to keep the high level of cooperation. 

We believe that P4CA changed the creative industry enterprises’ approach toward apprenticeship and created a new role in everyday production work – the apprenticeship coach role has emerged- at least in the Creative Industry Cluster in Pécs.