The creative sector is an important actor for the development of societies, economy and emerging futures. Important components of this growth have been advertising, visual communications and design. According to an independent study by Deloitte (Value of Advertising, 2017), every Euro spent on advertising approximately adds seven euro to the GDP. The EUR 92 billion spent on advertising in 2014 in the EU contributed EUR 643 billion to the GDP, representing 4.6% of the overall EU GDP. Additionally, there are as many as six million jobs in advertising in the EU, equivalent to 2.6% of all EU employment.Creativity is also becoming increasingly valued by people across commercial sectors, with research led businesses such as McKinsey finding strong correlation between creativity and financial performance (Mckinsey: Creativity's Bottom Line, 2017). With digital and mobile technologies becoming an increasingly important facet of modern life, it is necessary to ensure that the skills taught in education match the pace of innovation. Among various European stakeholders, there is great concern on the need to address the gap between the changing needs of the industry and the availability of a highly skilled workforce at the EU level. This challenge is widely described in policy documents such as the Digital Education Action Plan, the report on a coherent EU policy for cultural and creative industries, A new skills agenda for Europe, the Council Recommendations on key competences for lifelong learning or A new European Agenda for Culture, among many others.On the industry's side, each year D&AD uses the insight that it gets from the 20,000 pieces of work entered into its professional awards along with the thousands of student award entries to identify the gap between what is taught in universities and colleges and the skills required by the creative industry.Drawn on a detailed analysis of needs from D&AD and Art Directors Club of Europe (ADCE), Bridging the Creativity Gap will focus on skills such as Storytelling, Ideation & Critical thought, Prototyping, Craft, Digital (UX, UI) for the following targeted audiences:The student: those studying - advertising, branding, visual communications, graphic design, service design, product design, interactive design, UX and UI - and the emerging creatives entering the market, with and without professional experience.The tutor: those teaching the above-stated subjects both in VET and Higher Education as well as in-company tutors for the creative industry.In Bridging the Creativity Gap, D&AD, ADCE, Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia | Fab Lab Barcelona (IAAC), KERSNIKOVA Institute | Rampa and University of Oulu will partner to attain the following objectives:(1) To produce a Learning Curriculum encompassing those skills demanded by the creative industry to enable the prosperous incorporation into the industry and career development. (2) To explore a global-local framework for shifting the content of learning and the mechanisms by which it is delivered to more closely mirror the challenges of the creative industry. (3) To design, create and validate interactive OERs (videos, podcasts, tutorials) to properly address the skills gaps among BCG target groups. (4) To promote creative industry VET tutors’ professional development, adapting their key competences to the new challenges (eg. digital and technological innovations) (5) To showcase, disseminate and replicate proven methodologies, tools and practices for the EU creative VET ecosystem. Bridging the Creativity Gap will produce:- Five Intellectual Outputs (i) Learning Curriculum. Competence Matrix (skills and indicators including a paper/study).(ii) methodological toolkit(iii) set of OERs (videos, podcasts, articles, tutors guides) (iv) Teachers’ guidelines. Tutors guidelines, a comprehensive approach for building capacity skills for creative students (facilitation and evaluation handbook (v) Quality Assurance Framework- Two Short-term joint staff training events in London and Barcelona- One blended mobility of VET learners activity in Ljubljana- Two multiplier events in London (D&AD's New Blood Festival) and Barcelona (ADCE's High Potential) addressing an overall audience of at least 200 professionals, students, tutors and stakeholders from the EU creative sector.BCG's activities and results will contribute to reaching a wide impact at the local, regional, national and European levels among the project's participating organisations as well as BCG's targeted groups

We live in an increasingly fragmented and unequal society. Democracy is in crisis, and mistrust in science is on the rise, yet the unprecedented challenges we face, such as the climate and biodiversity crises, require greater scientific literacy and engagement across society. Education needs to provide the scientific knowledge to engender engaged and informed societies, but also to equip learners with the holistic competences to support and motivate them to become courageous thinkers and doers, actively shaping their own futures. We urgently need connected, system-wide responses that incorporate varied perspectives, are empathetic to different stakeholders’ needs and centre social justice and care. To achieve this, we need models for education that are more flexible and inclusive and advance lifelong learning to empower all citizens. LEVERS delivers Learning Ventures, a replicable model for expansive science learning through multi-stakeholder regional partnerships that collaboratively explore challenges and design science learning experiences to address local issues. In 9 Learning Venture demonstrator regions, stakeholders from formal, non-formal and informal education across education levels, community organisations, research and innovation, industry, and government, will be supported to adopt a systemic design approach to create climate justice projects offering meaningful real-world learning experiences. Capacity building and a mentoring programme will offer role models and guidance within and between regional Learning Ventures, linking R&I with education. The LEVERS Learning Framework and Field Guide will enable the partnership model to be adapted for other regions and challenges. Professional learning programmes and Open Schooling resources will enable widespread uptake from youth and adult educators. Guides for industry engagement, business models and policy recommendations will ensure transformative impact on science education in Europe into the future.

The Critical ChangeLab project aims to reinvigorate the relationship between youth and democracy and consequently the future of 21st Century European democracy. This is achieved by spearheading the reach and impact of Critical ChangeLab Model of Democratic Pedagogy, fostering youth's active democratic citizenship at a time where polarisation, deep political divisions and declining trust in democracy are spreading across Europe. The Critical ChangeLab Model for Democratic Pedagogy fosters learners' transformative agency and strengthens democratic processes in education through collaborations across formal and non-formal education and local actors around global/local challenges relevant for youth. The Model promotes creative and narrative practices to explore the historical roots of local and EU-wide challenges, understanding the value-systems and worldviews underlying distinct types of relations (human-human, human-nature, human-technology). At the Critical ChangeLabs, young people are introduced to approaches such as theatre of the oppressed, transmedia storytelling, as well as speculative and critical design to rethink European democracy and envision justice oriented democracy futures. Throughout the lifespan of the project, Critical ChangeLab aims to examine the current state of democracy within education institutions identifying youth’s perspectives on everyday democracy; design a scalable and tailorable model of democratic pedagogy in formal and non-formal learning environments; co-create and implement the model with youth and stakeholders, evaluate the model generating recommendations for policy and practice, and develop strategies to sustain the model and its outcomes overtime. Through various research actions combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, Critical ChangeLab will generate a robust evidence base to support democratic curriculum development using participatory, and creative and critical approaches.

Creative practices are underused in the urgent task of changing cultures towards sustainability. CreaTures promotes action for social and ecological sustainability by identifying those aspects of creative practice that contribute most effectively to socio-cultural transformation and producing an open-access framework to support practitioners and policy-makers in driving positive change. The project draws on pilot research that shows how collaboration, reflection and direct engagement are key to changing the public’s orientation to environment issues. Thus, its process of identifying and evaluating the design of significant aspects (and the impact of different contexts) involves three interrelated components: an Observatory, identifying and mapping existing, fragmented and often hidden transformational creative practices; a Laboratory, supporting new experimentation and direct engagement with diverse stakeholders, including the members of the public, by mounting several different scales and types of arts production, and; an Evaluation phase, testing new and existing creative practices in a systematic and concerted way for their impact. The project will combine insights from these undertakings into a transdisciplinary, evidence-based, and practical framework that highlights the strengths of and opportunities for the arts to contribute to addressing climate change and associated effects. The resulting framework will demonstrate effective paths to achieving sustainability, social cohesion and peaceful co-existence at a time of rapid change, offering a strategic research agenda for key stakeholders, a set of innovations addressing the cultures and conditions for delivering greater sustainability, and policy recommendations to focus and optimise work in mobilizing the arts for transformational futures.

Our project, 'Doing-It-Together Science', DITOs, represents a step change in European public engagement with science and innovation. We propose moving from a model in which scientific research, innovation, and problem-solving is mainly driven by scientific/professional institutions to one based on active public participation and capacity building with various levels and strategies of engagement in the scientific process. At the core of our ethos is a recognition of people's existing expertise and the different ways people want to and do engage in science and technology. The project is aimed at elevating public engagement with science across Europe from passive engagement with the process of developing science to an active one. Citizen Science and Do It Yourself (DIY) scientific efforts demonstrate that this is possible, and our aim is to ensure that the European Research Area will become leader in ‘deep’ public engagement that is afforded by these advances. As a 'Coordination and Support Action', this project will support and build upon DIY, grassroots, and frugal innovation initiatives so that in the short and medium term we sustain localised capacity building and in the long term the effects of these grassroots efforts channel to policy makers at different levels, from external advice to societal inputs, regarding appropriate research and innovation policies. The proposal includes the participation of policy bodies (European Citizen Science Association, DE), SMEs (Tekiu, UK; Eutema, AT), Universities (University College London, UK; Universite Paris Descartes, FR; University of Genève, CH), Science galleries and public spaces (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, BE; Medialab-Prado, E; Kersnikova Institution, SL) and NGOs (Meritum Association, PL; Waag Society, NL)