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Euro-Aspire is a
collaborative partnership
of creative
organisations across Europe, namely, Collage Arts,
Rinova, WAC Performing Arts & Media College,
Mulab, Artquimia, New Arts and VIA University
College. Funded by the
European Leonardo da Vinci Lifelong
Learning Programme, the project has been
developed for the non formal learning sector
(NFLS) in the creative and
cultural industries that use informal and
non
formal learning techniques
to:
- Tackle the exclusion and
alienation felt by disaffected young
people and other learners with traditional approaches
to learning;
- Provide career pathways into
the creative industries through progression
to employment, further
or higher education and self
employment;
- Foster the wider
employability and lifelong
learning of those it supports –
though discipline, team work, confidence and
presentation skills.
Organisations in this sector
currently provide structured learning in a non-formal
setting, some of which is externally validated - but
much of it is not. The Aspire project is exploring
these factors to develop a common European
solution to recognise competencies and to evolve a qualification
that can be gained through informal and non-formal
settings, providing a framework that can be used
throughout Europe.  | |
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Aarhus Application for
European City of Culture
2017
Manoj Ambasna (Director of
Collage Arts) and Richard Parkes (Director of Rinova)
took time out of the recent ASPIRE partnership meeting
in Aarhus, Denmark to address a local seminar concerned
with the city’s application to become the European
Capital of Culture 2017. They were able to
disseminate the activities of the ASPIRE project and
place it in context in terms of the wider issues of non
formal learning in the cultural sector to an audience of
some 50 public policy makers and officials of the
municipality; academic stakeholders, local businesses
and employers, artists and voluntary associations.
Read
more | |
What
Partners say
"very productive
and co-operative”
European delivery
partner
“consolidates
individual organisational practices plus incorporates
multiple perspectives thereby strengthening the
products” European delivery
partnerThe partnership is
foundational to the project and it is the melting pot
from which the ideas and the work emerge. The meetings
are very intensive and a huge amount is done
collaboratively during this time. Partners then return
to their various countries with sets of tasks that they
focus on until the next meeting point. During this time
they support each other remotely, for example through
the intranet. read
more |
Italy and the
Creative Industries
The latest research of
Unioncamere (Chamber of Commerce) and Symbola Foundation
shows the growing importance of the creative sector in
Italy. These numbers speak for themselves. The creative
industry exceeds 68 billion euros in sales,
corresponding to 4.9% of the added value of the entire
national economy. Read
more | |
ASPIRE AND THE EUROPEAN
DIMENSION
The origins of
cooperation between some of the partners in the ASPIRE
project date back as far as 1997 when WAC, Collage Arts
and Mulab collaborated in a YOUTHSTART project.
Since then, there have been ad hoc bilateral
collaborations (outside of the framework of EU
programmes), most notably led by Collage Arts, whose
Music Management courses were adapted and delivered in
Italy and Spain by Mulab and Artquimia. Read
more |
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Next
Steps?
There is still a lot of work to be
done, both within the remaining months of the project
and beyond.
“The recognition of informal learning
in the formal educational system is a matter of great
concern and the translation of real/life expressions to
EQF is an important challenge that we will pursue,
specially because creative, innovative and
entrepreneurial competencies are key/competencies in our
time.” Aspire
partner
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