creativity@work: the summary

In times of high unemployment among young people in Europe, especially with a migration background or with learning difficulties, it is important to prepare young people better for their working lives. We have chosen to combine creativity and being self-employed without employees (ZZP-er). In this way you can work independently and you don’t have to wait for an employer to give you a job. You also can start working in other countries in Europe. 

Schools pay less and less attention to creative subjects, but precisely by stimulating and developing creativity, you get flexible, enterprising, problem-solving students. Creativity is one of the important 21st century skills. By bringing students in the different countries into contact with creative entrepreneurs and with various innovative, creative disciplines, they gain insight into their own creative talent and the possibilities to make a profession out of it. 

All four participating schools (Germany: Neuburg, Spain: Cordoba, Italy: Assago, the Netherlands: Emmeloord) are secondary schools; with students between 13 and 16 years old. All schools believe in the added value of this project and see exchanges of students as a necessity to achieve good sustainable outcomes. It’s important for students to experience the differences between countries, but also the opportunities. The schools differ in experiences in terms of creative subjects, innovative technology and career orientation. The partnership will be based upon exchange of good practice and learning from eachother. The project will last two years and there will be two students exchanges each year. Each school will attend with 8 students and 2 teachers.

Students and teachers during the first mobility in Emmeloord

Prior to an exchange the students make presentations about themselves during an English lesson and in Artclasses they can already make designs for the creative workshops they will attend during the exchange. In that way other students get to know about the project too. Every exchange the students will visit self- employed persons (art/design, music/drama) and interview them and give presentations about the visit afterwards; they take part in various innovative, creative workshops like designing with 3D- printing, making vlogs, etc; they visit a company/ institution, involved with Art / Design or entrepeneurship; they write a businessplan based on the Art product they made and a marketing assignment; if possible they visit a cultural heritage place (if in the area). Afterwards, back at their own school the students will give presentations to their classmates during the Economy classes about the experiences they had with Creativity@work.

All activities will be communicated via Twinspace and our own blogspot, students will make vlogs before, during and after the exchange and put them on our youtube channel. Updates of the project will be published on each schools website and the local media will be tuned in everytime when there is an activity.

From the vlogs and the presentations afterwards we can see if the students have discovered their creative talents, know what it takes to become a self -employed person and understand that, regardless of their origin or their learning difficulties, they can take initiative themselves to become independent entrepeneurs in the creative field. 

With this project we want to inspire the schools to give more attention to subjects such as Art and Design, Music and Drama. Working as a self-employed person and writing a simple businessplan can be included in the curriculum of Career Orientation and Guidance.

The teachers involved in the project

Because the vlogs are also viewed by other youngsters they can be inspired to develop creativity and make it their profession. Parents of students will be happy because the students are better prepared for their future. Students perform better at school when they have a goal in mind and there are fewer drop-outs; something the schoolmanagements will appreciate.

With this project we want to help to reduce unemployment among young people in the future.