Program: Erasmus+ Capacity Building in the field of youth
Action Type: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices
Project duration: 01-03-2016 – 31-10-2017
Lead partner: International Management Institute (IMI) from Bulgaria
Project partners:
1. Budapest Metropolitan University
2. National Youth Council of Namibia
3. TEARS Group Kenya
4. Ngamiland Council of Non-Governmental Organizations
5. Word N Sound Live Literature Company (South African)
Short summary: The SMART project is a joint initiative of 6 organizations (2 youth NGOs, a university, an umbrella organization of NGOs, a National Youth Council and a private arts company) from Bulgaria, Hungary and 4 Partner Countries (PCs) – Botswana, Kenya, Namibia and the Republic of South Africa. All organizations have a vast membership, outreach potential and strong credentials in the arts, arts management or education sectors.
The project’s overall objective is to promote collaborative development, dissemination and wide utilization of innovative Open Educational Resources (OERs) and training methods in arts and creative sector management and entrepreneurship, in view of building youth workers’ and youth organizations’ capacity to foster youth inclusion, youth employment, and youth-led community and social impact driven initiatives.
An integrated set of key activities will be implemented in the project`s lifetime:
- a training and educational resource development activity focused on skills development in arts management, creative sector entrepreneurship and social impact driven arts-based initiatives
- 3 training activities based on a learning-by-doing method of training by involving trainees in the management of real-world art events implemented by the consortium members
- development of high-quality OERs and methodological guidelines for experiential (learning-by-doing) training approaches in the target fields, seeking to find a middle ground between sophisticated academic training and practical youthwork
- development of sustainable web-based inventories of youth arts and culture resources;
- introduction of a sustainable mentoring scheme for upcoming artists and ambitious arts managers and administrators
- a series of local training of trainers workshops.
The project’s intended impact is to empower the youth sectors in the EU and the Africa regions to offer more and better quality training in arts management, arts marketing and creative entrepreneurship for youth outside formal education systems, thus bolstering the target regions’ creative economies and maximizing their capacity for sustainable job creation and reduction of youth poverty and social exclusion.
SmART project is motivated by the belief that the development of the target regions’ creative economies can contribute to youth job creation and the fight against youth poverty and exclusion. For their potential to be unleashed, youth work should provide adequate high-quality training in arts management, arts marketing and creative entrepreneurship for youth outside formal education systems. SMART is based on the rationale that youth work is particularly auspicious for a) practice-based action training utilizing existing youth art initiatives and international collaborations, b) promoting social impact in and through the arts and creative sectors, c) developing mentoring schemes for upcoming artists and cultural groups.
The SmART project develops, tests and disseminates a model of an innovative training method based on experiential learning (learning by doing) and immersion into the real-world environment of arts management and social impact driven arts initiatives.
For more info, please visit the project website: http://www.managing-art.eu/en/