<aside> đź’ˇ Large-scale skills partnership for the Cultural and Creative Industries Ecosystem with 174 members. The Creative Pact for Skills Manifesto, UPDATE: 20241116
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Download the Creative Pact for Skills Manifesto: →
Endorsement_Creative Pact for Skills_Letter_v.17_20241126.pdf
Menue: Challenge I Ambition I Skills needs I Objectives I Action points I KPIs I Sign I FAQ I Glossary
Culture, creativity, and innovation are the core of the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) Ecosystem, one of the 14 industrial ecosystems identified by the 2020 New EU Industrial Strategy$^1$. The ecosystem concept covers both the commercial (industry) and non-commercial cultural and creative sectors, as well as cultural and creative areas of other sectors (e g. education). The ecosystem is composed of over 8 million talented people across Europe, who work with great passion in 1,2 million enterprises. They enhance the quality of the lives of European citizens and contribute to their well-being. This added value is unquantifiable but essential for society, whilst in economic terms these sectors represent over €477 billion in turnover annually, which translates to almost 4% of EU's GDP$^2$.
The CCIs ecosystem presents a great diversity. It covers a wide range of value chains and sectors from architecture, archives, libraries, museums, artistic crafts, audio-visual (including film, television, and multimedia), videogames and immersive experiences, tangible and intangible cultural heritage, design (including fashion design), festivals, music, literature, performing arts, books and publishing, to radio and visual arts$^3$.
The CCIs ecosystem is made up of 99% SMEs or micro-enterprises who are struggling to attract new talents or meet the demands of new challenges. It also counts very high shares of self-employment, of people working part-time or on non-permanent contracts, which means that workers in this ecosystem face a very high level of job insecurity and a lack of re- and upskilling opportunities.
The CCIs ecosystem is facing the challenge of a fundamental transformation, not only because of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, but also because of digitalisation and the necessary green transformation. In the last years, however, it has demonstrated incredible resilience in situations such as the global financial crisis, and now even more with COVID. Upskilling is key to support this resilience, as well as to activate cross-sectoral innovations, which also benefit the larger economy and society as a whole in their ambitions of transformation towards a zero-carbon world. Lifelong learning opportunities are also key to supporting the development of individual careers and the well-being of the professionals in the sector. In order to remain competitive on local and international level, the CCIs ecosystem as a whole must meet the economic and social challenges ahead and therefore must invest and develop new ways to attract new talents, and to re- and upskill its workforce.
This large-scale partnership identifies upskilling and re-skilling needs at different levels. First, it looks at all the skills related to specific occupations. It also considers the needs of specific parts of the ecosystem and their respective professionals to develop activities that support the acquisition of transversal skills. Transversal skills, defined by UNESCO, such as: networking, entrepreneurship or research methods, are not related to a specific job, but enable learners to successfully adapt to change in order to lead meaningful and productive professional lives. Finally, this partnership recognises the need to build transformative competencies such as critical thinking, conflict resolution and communication or systems thinking for students and professionals, as defined by the OECD for “creating new value, reconciling tensions and dilemmas, and taking responsibility” to thrive in our ever-changing world and shape a better future. The Creative Pact for Skills proposes to adopt and implement an EU-level roadmap in order to act upon the most urgent horizontal skills needs across the different parts of the CCIs ecosystem and identify opportunities of joint actions to better promote synergies among them and among different levels (local, regional, national, European).
The Creative Pact for Skills presents a roadmap for skills transformation by use of ideas and good practices for the CCIs ecosystem. In addition, the Creative Pact for Skills makes commitments and establishes key performance indicators to measure progress.
TheCreative Pact for Skills not only supports the development and resilience of the CCIs ecosystem, but also aims to find efficient and innovative ways to support all education and training activities, which requires good and continuous collaboration between education, training and the sectors.
The Creative Pact for Skills builds on an open and inclusive process for all interested parties, existing and future stakeholders, initiatives or projects, including regions and their networks, to jointly cooperate under one European umbrella. It aims to be developed in close partnership by the industry, with a key role for social partners, sector bodies and education providers, and be based on sector-level data and qualitative analyses. The ambition is to promote a life-long learning ecosystem that is relevant, accessible, and affordable for all sector professionals – including self-employed - throughout their careers, while reinforcing synergies and the pooling of resources between existing sector skills initiatives across Europe.
The ambition is also to promote new learning models and more qualitative learning opportunities with a priority focus on digital, green, entrepreneurial skills, and with a special attention to on-the-job learning - in order to equip Cultural and Creative sectors’ professionals with key skills needed to address the current and future challenges faced by the ecosystem and secure individual career paths.