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CYANOTYPES

HKU is coordinator of the project CYANOTYPES: twenty European partners from the cultural and creative industries working together on a toolkit for their sector, with educational modules to teach the competencies that are the most needed in the professional field. The first pilot projects are set to take off later this year.

After acknowledging the economic and social relevance of the cultural and creative industries, the EU started various projects to study and strengthen the added value of the sectors. CYANOTYPES is one of them. This four-year Blueprint project is part of the Erasmus+ programme’s Alliances for Innovation and aimed at exploring and applying the skills that are important in the quickly changing professional practice of designers, artists and other creative professions. Participants from all across Europe are working together on the design of a blueprint for the learning methods that can move creative professionals forward, for now and in the future. The name CYANOTYPES is derived from the photography process that leads to such blueprints.

European consortium

Already, about twenty partners from ten different countries have joined in, from various branches of the cultural and creative industries. They include network organisations in Italy and Belgium, representatives of the Swedish fashion and games industries, and higher-education institutes and universities in Austria, Germany, Norway and Portugal. The consortium is directed from the Netherlands and has HKU University of the Arts as coordinator, with David Crombie and Caroline van Leuven as project leaders and coordinators. Together, the members are investigating which competencies are needed to let their industry flourish. And moreover: looking for a method that enables people in this fragmented professional field to learn the skills they need, instantaneously, in a specific context. Because, it makes quite a difference whether you are talking about the basic requirements for applied games in Sweden, or about the key to successful creative entrepreneurship in Italy.

Concrete learning modules

In the fall of 2022, the project was launched, with the slogan: ‘We are all CYANOTYPES’. The first year was mainly about identifying the needs of key stakeholders in higher education, vocational education and the creative industry. This also required all participants to learn to speak each other’s language, align all terminology, and formulate collective principles for getting to a uniform approach. The goal is to conclude the process by forming concrete learning modules available that students and creatives can use to claim their position in the industry and to contribute to innovation in society. For this purpose, the coming years will be about researching what contents, and what educational methods and didactics, would meet the needs of the sector.

Playbook

This investigation won’t be top-down and by each on their own, but in a challenging method of co-creation. How can so many different stakeholders from so many different work environments get to a workable educational framework together? During the Creative Skills Week in Vienna, in October 2023, the project’s first results were presented, and the follow-up steps identified. By now, the partners have started analysing the huge amounts of data that has been collected across Europe, which will soon be published in a practical ‘Playbook’ that can form a support in the co-creative process.
Creative Skills Week 2023 in Wenen

Anticipation skills

Many of the skills that have been identified so far are about the ability to anticipate an uncertain future. One that will see a range of new partners for cooperating on global challenges in the fields of climate, health, digitalisation and sustainability. This not only requires knowledge and resilience, but also a new way of thinking and acting. Therefore, systemic thinking, unlearning ingrained assumptions, increased awareness of the contexts, and being able to communicate a clear narrative to others, are highly prioritised.

Pilot projects

On the basis of successful models for alternative competencies, such as GreenComp for sustainable living and working, LifeComp for life-long learning, or DigComp for digital competencies, collaboration has now started on a ‘train the trainer framework’ for the creative and cultural sector. The competency profile that will emerge from that, will be tested in five different European ‘ecosystems’ for the coming five years. Over twenty pilot projects will be run to create a framework that offers both a general standard as well as sufficient room for adaptation to local needs and circumstances. The first pilot takes off this year in Utrecht Creative Community: a network of cultural and creative professionals, organisations and educators, including HKU, in the Dutch city of Utrecht.

Goal

CYANOTYPES’ eventual goal is to realise the co-creation and implementation of a training programme, with concrete international skills modules, on various VET levels (EQF level 3 to 5) and tertiary levels (EQF level 6 to 8), including a form of workplace training and micro learning for existing and newer professional profiles.