Article by Folkuniversitetet
Developing entrepreneurial competences of adult and unemployed people
EntreTeathre EU Erasmus plus project aims to develop entrepreneurial competences of adult unemployed people. This is based on the theatre and entrepreneurship educational methodologies and latest research developed by the project partners, 7 organizations from Sweden, Italy, Ireland, Romania, Denmark, Spain, who have expertise in the fields of performing arts, entrepreneurship and adult education. The objective of the project is to develop an inclusive, engaging and innovative training methodology to provide our target group of adult unemployed people with entrepreneurial skills to help them to reactivate their career either as freelancers or to gain action in their future employment thus supporting their inclusion in the job market. At local, regional, national and European/international levels, “EntreTheatre” will encourage a dialogue between business organisations and creative/art organisations. The project will thereby contribute to new methodologies to boost entrepreneurship education and employability.
We are working on the Output 1 – Skills Assessment Framework – leader of the action is the Department for International Cooperation of the Folkuniversitetet of Uppsala – Sweden.
To ensure that the “EntreTheatre” methodology is designed in a way that effectively supports unemployed people and job seekers in improving their soft skills and entrepreneurial ones, the partnership will develop a Skills Assessment Framework. It aims to find similarities in entrepreneurship and theatre education between the partner countries in order to create a programme that can be applied to an extensive group of unemployed people and job seekers across Europe (including all countries that do not belong to the current partnership), while still taking into account the differences that demonstrate certain specific needs of this target audience (such as cultural differences). The partnership will use several quantitative and qualitative research methods to complete the Skills Assessment Framework (with a main aim on soft skills), combining both online (surveys) and face-to-face sessions (focus groups and interviews) with the target group as well as intermediaries (entrepreneurship education experts). The framework will map out the practical drama techniques learning outcomes and link them to the learning outcomes needed to develop soft skills and entrepreneurial skills in order to have clear and defined learning paths.
Who we are: presentation of the partnership!
Folkuniversitetet – Sweden
Folkuniversitetet (FU) is a national Adult Education Association which offers a wide range of VET and adult education training courses throughout Sweden and in several European countries. Folkuniversitetet employs around 400 teachers on a full-time basis and a further 7,000 part-time. An administrative staff of some 500 people works with administration and development. Through the cooperation with other FU offices in Sweden, FU-Uppsala has a national coverage. FU was registered in 1954 and is nowadays a leading organisation in Sweden in Adult Education and Lifelong learning. Every year, Folkuniversitetet welcomes over 140,000 students to a variety of lectures, short courses or full-time study programs with duration of six months to two years. Folkuniversitetet offers a wide range of adult education, both initial and continuous Vocational education and training, secondary education and labour market training.
FO-Aarhus – Denmark
FO-Aarhus has a vast experience in project management. It has a large network of local and national institutions and FO-Aarhus cooperates with them to have a greater impact on its projects. Among its cast network are the Municipality of Aarhus (FO-Aarhus implements social projects for the municipality); local and national learning institutions, various types of NGOs; government institutions – both in policymaking and in delivery of public service. For more than 40 years, FO-Aarhus has been actively working in a wide variety of adult education projects. It started as an evening school offering night classes to all citizens of
Aarhus. Over the years, it has gone into contracts with the Municipality of Aarhus to run projects for learners with special needs, integration schemes for immigrants, full time activation projects for short time and long time unemployed citizens, while still keeping up night school nowadays as leisure time classes to accommodate citizens who for a period have the day at their disposal.
Spektrum – Romania
The mission of the Spektrum Educational Center Foundation (SEC) is offering education and training for a proactive, synergistic and successful community, while having in focus the UN development goals. SEC aims at providing up-to-date knowledge and long-lasting competences by high-quality, consumer-oriented and varied educational services. We offer non-formal courses and training for various target groups (women, young adults, youth, children, seniors), including SMEs, local NGOs, involving disadvantaged members of the community (unemployed, low skilled, etc), too. Within the framework of our educational development projects we are searching for effective ways and means to prepare the region’s workforce for the rapid economic changes and encourage entrepreneurship. As a member of various educational consortia and as a partner in Lifelong Learning Projects SEC has locally implemented projects aimed at further learning through mobility and strengthening cooperation between education, training and labour market, developing key entrepreneurial and transversal competences using innovative, learner-centred approaches.
Materahub – Italy
Materahub is an aggregator of people and business, a “space” where they meet, encourage the creation of new job opportunities and the promotion of sustainable development through a process of coaching, training and business development. A consortium of SMEs combining the experience of a VET body (Quality For – accredited to Basilicata Region), a consulting firm with experience on EU project management and quality assurance (Quality Program), an International Certification body (ACS Registrars Italia) and a social cooperative managing cultural heritage and creative activities in the UNESCO site of Matera (Artezeta).Through materahub different subjects provide their expertise and ideas to valorise the local and regional community, which becomes the starting point and meeting place of national and international realities related to the HUB. For this reason, materahub provides spaces and resources, links and knowledge, training and talents, opportunities and investments to help people to turn ideas into reality. Materahub promotes know-how exchange and coworking activities, within its “officine”, with the aim to create and plan, through hubber’s work, creative yards in which give birth to new projects and the development of new skills and competences.
L’Albero – Italy
L’Albero is an all-female artistic crew directed by Alessandra Maltempo, Vania Cauzillo and Cristina Palermo; the base of every creative process is teamwork, which is experimented by joining each peculiar competence of the members: Arts, digital communication and social and educational process. In this multidisciplinary scenario, L’Albero uses the theatrical language as the main instrument to cross knowledges, places and contexts and then to flow into a single center: the individual’s one. Through many intense educational activities and focused performative actions, L’Albero has developed and realized several projects in different contexts and countries for years (public schools, penitentiaries, rehab centers), aimed to raise awareness about different topics: social campaigns, integration, prevention, knowledge distribution, early childhood and adolescent education, narration of the territory, cooperating with public and private institutions and organizations.
Instalofi – Spain
Instalofi Levante S.L. – FyG Consultores (FYG) is a non-formal educational and train-ing organsiation, that promotes the local labour market as well as a lifelong learning process of adults and young people. FYG works actively on career development ser-vices to refer to a wide range of programs and services whose main purpose is to help individuals to gain the knowledge, skills and attitudes to develop life skills and to man-age their learning, work and careers. The training programs delivered by FyG are re-lated to business creation and innovative concepts, entrepreneurship, development of services, service design thinking, employability basic skills, literacy and numeracy skills and soft skills training. FyG acts actively as an education and training company promoting and enhancing the development of adults seeing for new opportunities and helping them to become more employable, facing different factors of exclusion: youngsters and adults with educa-tional difficulties, unemployed with economic or social obstacles
Smashing times – Ireland
Smashing Times is an award winning professional theatre and film company involved in performance, training and participation. The work is underpinned by a rights-based approach and a commitment to artistic excellence and social engagement. Smashing Times has worked for over twenty years using creative processes of theatre and film to promote peace, human rights, gender equality, anti-racism, anti-sectarianism, remembrance and positive mental health. As a leading professional arts organisation the company develops innovative, cutting edge, state of the art national and transnational projects that promote social justice, peace, gender equality, human rights and positive mental health through high quality artistic processes, merging art, culture and politics to interact and engage with contemporary society and the world we live in. A key aim is to create opportunities for people of all ages and cultures to work collaboratively with artists and we work in a range of settings from the professional theatre space to the local community with a focus on areas experiencing exclusion or marginalisation. The work engages directly with local communities to provide professional practice and to promote the use of theatre for personal and social development, for individual and community empowerment and the exploration of issues relevant in our lives today.
