Employability and knowledge based economy : tools for innovative culture
The Nord-Pas de Calais Region, the flemish and the french Communities of Belgium, the Region of Castilla-la-Mancha, the Voivodship of Silesia, Rogaland County Council and the Arts Wales Council are engaged, since 2003, in a strong territorial cooperation. Improving regional policies has always been the main priority of this cooperation. These regions wanted to go further on an innovative issue: human capital in a knowledge-based economy. Indeed, the development of a knowledge-based economy is based on new job sectors, new working methods and new professional skills and competences. It requires new policies, enabling to reinforce the employability of the workforce. The cultural and creative sector is a key sector in this framework. Knowledge-intensive sector strongly linked to creativity, innovation and ICT, and important new job sector, it favours the development of new skills closely related to the employability in a knowledge-based economy. Nevertheless, it remains underexploited.
The project aims at developing, in each partner region, suitable strategies, policies and tools on the link between cultural and creative sector, knowledge-based economy and employability. The project is based on five working phases. The Identification phase will enable, in each region, to identify, analyse and evaluate good practices, thanks to a joint methodological and conceptual framework. The Exchange phase will ensure an exchange of these practices, an in-depth analysis of their development conditions and a diagnostic of each region situation. The Capitalization phase will capitalize public policies and regional analysis. The Transfer feasability phase will study the transfer of these practices within each partner region, targeting the most relevant ones. Finally, the Experimentation phase will enable to test some good practices. These phases will result in concrete tools for policy makers, based on a better knowledge of the sector characteristics and of regional specificities.
The project will contribute to strengthening the cultural and creative sector, and to identify it as a full economic sector, and more largely, as a key sector of a knowledge-based economy. It will contribute to developing a cross-cutting approach around this sector, to integrate it in development policies and to define more suitable strategies, policies and tools, at regional and European level. It will also contribute to enlarging the reflections on this sector, still more focused on the industrial and entreprenarial issues, and less on human capital. In this framework, one of the project results should be a better use of the European Social Funds. Covering 7 regions and 7 countries, the partnership is based on a complementarity between regional authorities, technical experts (CRRAV, Technocité, Bangor University, Simetrias Foundation, Ars Cameralis) and scientific experts (University IUAV of Venice and Relais Culture Europe).