"“Skills4Smart TCLF 2030” constitutes the first step into a new dynamic sustainable community of diverse private/public actors committed to support skills development and employment opportunities across EU in the Textile, Clothing, Leather, Footwear and Leather Goods sector, which are indispensable to innovate and produce high-added value products.The consortium will build an evidence-based industry-led ""TCLF Skills Strategy"", and during the first four years, partners will work to [a] identify concrete actions, priority activities, and well-defined tools/outputs to anticipate and match skills’ supply with demand; [b] improve skills intelligence and information mechanisms by creating networks and partnerships; [c] update/enhance the attractiveness of the sector to engage newcomers, families, companies, and policy makers at regional, national and EU levels, and [d] identify funding opportunities and engage regions and other stakeholders to ensure the long-term sustainability of outcomes and further implementation of the strategy.Activities will create tools for skills anticipation and new curricula/qualifications by [a] sharing/integrating existing VET and skills knowledge/best practices to provide a pool of tools, research, innovative learning methods suited to new generations; [b] designing 8 new transnational VET profiles and respective curricula and training programmes focused on digitalisation, sustainability and KETs to better suit companies’ needs and global opportunities. Such profiles and programmes, in line with EQF/ECVET, will be piloted and validated by national VET recognition bodies. An EU Fashion Virtual Campus will be the operational and living hub, sharing project’ outcomes, and other useful education/ employment data in a second phase, to attract and orientate newcomers, strengthen VET, research, and industry partnerships, and nurture all TCLF stakeholders throughout EU to consolidate/enhance TCLF skills excellence for the creation of jobs."

CISUTAC will tackle current bottlenecks in the transition to circular textiles and clothing. For scale and significance, we focus on polyester, cotton & cellulosic fibres (together ca. 90% of textile materials) and products from 3 sub-sectors: garments, active goods and workwear. In this way, we will have a representative view on the challenges the textile sector is facing for circular transition. CISUTAC follows a holistic approach covering the technical, sectoral and socio-economic levels. We will provide systemic innovations at these levels and perform 3 pilots to demonstrate their feasibility and value: (i) Repair and disassembly; (ii) Sorting for reuse and recycling; (iii) Circular garments through fibre to fibre recycling and design for circularity. To realise these pilots, we will develop semi-automated workstations, analyse infrastructure and material flow, digitally enhance sorting operations and setup interventions with consumers. After the piloting phase, attention will be on the uptake of the results, by the sector, by the wider stakeholder group as well by the consumers. With (worldwide) leading brands and companies, CSOs, RTOs and EU associations, CISUTAC is truly EU-wide and covers the full novel circular value chain. Through the consortium, and further supported by the Transition Support Group with zz members, CISUTAC is strongly linked to ongoing initiatives allowing synergies and joint activities. This is essential for our implementation but also for leveraging the impact and enabling the shift towards a sustainable EU textiles & clothing, underpinned by circular material flows and supported by the wider stakeholders. CISUTAC will bring significant impact of scale via its innovations on repair, dismantling, sorting and fibre-to-fibre recycling. Realising this impact will lead to a reduction of ca. 975ktonCO2eq yearly and to new business activities and markets that together have a value of ca. €250mio and lead to ca. 1300 FTE, also social economy.

The Textile, Clothing, Leather, and Footwear (TCLF) industries in Europe with an annual turnover of €195 billion in 2019, employs 2 million workers in 220.600 companies, 99% SMEs concentrated in Italy, Romania, Poland, Portugal, Germany and Spain, more precisely in a few regions. TCLF has now to tackle with the challenges presented by the new digital era at a higher level, within a framework of transition to a greener, circular economy increasing the resilience of the organizations involved. The new METASKILLS4TCLF proposal, allying 30 partners, is robust and ambitious, responding to all objectives of the Alliances for Sectoral Cooperation on Skills (implementing the “Blueprint”), crosses the PACT4SKILLS TCLF pillars, and, with the compromise of consolidating and updating part of the former Skills4Smart TCLF Industries 2030 project outcomes, namely skills strategy, curricula and contents, results in a stronger and a wider scope cooperation, anticipating and responding to new skills gaps with innovative educational multilevel resources and delivering methodologies, involving new actors in the educational scene of TCLF across Europe, raising attractiveness and inclusion, preventing that “no talent is wasted”, together with a strong dissemination campaign and sustainability plan.The new outcomes will be:-Strong skills partnership with relevant stakeholders-Skills Intelligence for Forecasting and Monitoring TCLF Emerging Skills Needs-New modular training curricula/training modules “Inside Fashion” (both for initial education & training and upskilling-reskilling of the workforce), all tested in due piloting opportunities-Innovative modular contents, VR training and learning tools and update the ones developed in the former blueprint -A European Virtual Reality Campus-A train the trainers and teacher package to strengthening skills supply to demand -An awareness raising campaign on attractiveness and inclusion in the TCLF industries and correspondent tools.