Cyanotypes - Strategic Skills for Creative Futures • ALL DIGITAL

18 Aug Cyanotypes – Strategic Skills for Creative Futures

18 Aug, 2022

Posted at 17:29h in Current projects, Employability and Entrepreneurship by Andrea Bedorin

CYANOTYPES project brings together a wide variety of organisations, stakeholders, and European networks to address the needs and skills gaps in the Cultural & Creative Industries. Based on innovative multidisciplinary approaches, CYANOTYPES tackles the sector’s potential for innovation and competitiveness which deals as well with challenges presented by, among others, COVID-19, the digital transition, and the green shift.

The project title references the iron-based photographic process that lead to the term “blueprint” we know today. Inspired by this key moment of innovation, CYANOTYPES sees in this very practice an exemplary episode from the pre-digital archive of arts-and-technology experimentation that inspires creators to this day. Invoking a pre-digital technology, CYANOTYPE cautions that “the digital” is itself in a moment of transition, offering us new possibilities and perspectives. Anticipating growing roles for AI, Big Data, and synthetic content generated by data-driven systems in the immediate future, we also see the need to imagine multiple futures on which innovation in CCI education depends. Earlier projects indicated that advancing vocational education programs should follow the guiding principle that the “Community is the Curriculum”, moving on from the idea of a wholly centralised, institutional approach to learning.

CYANOTYPES builds anticipation into its methodological framework to empower creators to imagine multiple futures and to make their processes more environmental-friendly, sustainable, resilient, and dynamic. Organised by a triple loop learning framework focused on how we “learn how to learn”, CYANOTYPES’ integrates specific and transversal skill sets organized by key thematic areas to serve as context-specific points for different stakeholder groups. CYANOTYPES provides short- and longer-term strategic interventions and concrete skills development solutions that can be adopted across the European CCI ecosystem.

OBJECTIVES

It is our intention to have three core outcomes in the first year:

the Skills Intelligence Gathering;
the Strategy for the CCI;
Addressing the urgent skills identified by the call relating to post-COVID, Green Transition and the Digital Shift.

This will culminate in the outcomes being presented to a Pre-Pilot Hackathon at the end of Year One.

The second year will focus on creating content for the Cyanotype Training Programme and considering related delivery mechanisms.
In addition, new delivery methods and a Train the Trainer approach will be incorporated into the materials. At the end of Year 2 an extensive Validation Event will be held with invited stakeholders and experts identified and contacted through the Cyanotype outreach activities.

Thereafter in the third year, the focus will shift to an iterative prototyping cycle, where we will establish three 6-month pilot phases. Under the lead of WIFI-WKO, the first phase will establish 5 initial pilots each run by a partner, the second phase will have 5 cross-sectoral pilots and 5 sectoral pilots (film, games, design, architecture, performing arts), also run by partners. Having analyzed the feedback from these iterative loops, the modules and delivery mechanisms and the Train the Trainer package will be revised and presented at the Cyanotype Fair, designed to attract the widest interest and also where interested organisations and takeholders will be invited to join an Open Call for at least 10 further pilots to be supported by Cyanotype during the first 6 months

Cyanotype is committed to maximising the outreach and communication activities of the project and will do so with a clear strategic approach to the CCI sector and by harnessing the considerable power and reach of the networks directly involved in the
project and lead by ELIA. Cyanotype will have a presence at a significant number of related events during the project lifetime and with a major Cyanotype event every year presenting the project outcomes. This will include a final Showcase Event in Year 4.

The project seeks to have a long-term plan that both integrates the project outcomes as widely as possiblewithin existing contexts but also maintains the impulse of the Cyanotype initiative across the CCI sector.