Article by UJM
The arts and crafts sectors are important contributors to the EU creative economy. However, assessing their impact and spill over effects poses several challenges connected to the intangible value created and circulated by artistic and craft products. Within MOSAIC, we explore the value generated by these sectors through the lens of several core impact areas which sustain a durable and resilient growth. As a result, the first four deliverables of the MOSAIC research touch upon core impact areas that are largely debated within arts and crafts, due to their ability to shape the future of these sectors.
The first report aims to expand environmental sustainability thinking in vocational education in arts and crafts through a systematic mapping of best practices. In doing so it uses a practice-led lens that links the macro context (legal), to the micro-perspective provided by actors such as VET centers and craft/design businesses, to grasp the way in which best practices emerge. Structured in 4 chapters, the report shows that both green laws and innovative best practices inside the industry will continue to shape new visions around sustainability in arts and crafts education. The report proposes a novel framework for mapping green best practices in arts and crafts VET education and identifies several future directions of development in terms of green skills.
The second report tackles the topic of social inclusion. In doing so, it addresses the challenge of mapping inclusive best practices within VET education, by exploring how arts and crafts progress our contemporary understanding of social inclusion. Structured in 4 Chapters, the report shows that while inclusive legislation needs to be fine-tuned to become actionable, the industry is expected to pay increasing attention to different dimensions of social inclusion and VET centers will have to embed social inclusion as a central part of their governance structure, as well as their educational and operational strategy. The report proposes a novel framework for mapping inclusive best practices in arts and crafts VET education and identifies several future directions of development in terms of inclusive skills.
The third report aims to better understand the evolution of entrepreneurial best practices in vocational training in arts and crafts. In doing so, it approaches the topic from different angles: social business models, digital and social entrepreneurship, digital revolution and sharing / social economy. Findings bring to light three categories of typical characteristics of entrepreneurial arts and crafts practices: strategies and policies (better aligned strategies with topics of sustainability, social inclusion, digitalisation, research and development), context/environment (agile business management, strong networking) and market (reconciling entrepreneurial matters with financial robustness and pace of activity focused on crafts). These characteristics define structured ways to think about the nature and form of best practices that emerge in the area of entrepreneurship in arts and crafts.
The last research report represents to some extent a synthesis of the above topics by tackling the skill needs inside the arts and crafts sectors. This last report comes to bridge the existing gap around the lack of transnational evidence for skill needs, by using a mixed method approach that combines survey results with focus group analysis. Findings suggest that although arts and crafts businesses have a real interest in social inclusion, digitalisation and sustainability topics, they face a series of challenges in operationalizing them, partly because they are often confronted with paradoxes and conflicting junctions. These can be tackled by developing specific skills connected to: self-development (e.g. versatility, flexibility, autonomy, self-criticism, lifelong learning, perseverance and proactive mindset), work-value relation (e.g. motivation, will, curiosity, punctuality), entrepreneurship (e.g. change management and creative entrepreneurship), digitalisation (e.g. digital literacy and digital intelligence) and cooperation and collaboration (e.g. relational abilities).
By proposing novel frameworks for mapping best practices in these specific impact areas, identifying key directions for future development and providing recommendations for future study and research, these thematic reports speak both to academics, students and the industry (VET centers and craft businesses).
