The EU’s cultural sector is a key driver of growth. However, the current economic crisis requires cultural organisations to be able to navigate new challenges in order to fulfil this growth potential.  They can only do this with effective, high-skilled cultural managers.

“Upskill: Up skilling cultural managers, matching skills needs by improving vocational training”[1] has been a celebration of cultural training from across Europe. The focus of which has been to acknowledge and address key competencies and innovative training practices, which are prevalent and important to the cultural sector.

Partners from six countries: Italy, Denmark, Hungary, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom; all with complementary knowledge and experience, collaborated on a knowledge exchange project, demonstrating the breadth of methods of training cultural managers within the sector.  Upskill was not only about new methodologies in vocational educational training in the cultural field, but it was also about being inspired by practices and organisations.

Through a series of international meetings  and local activities, it aimed to:

– identify and assess the skills and key competencies linked to entrepreneurship, cultural awareness, leadership, audience development, digital skills and link these to the day to day activities of jobs in the field of arts and culture management;

– exchange and jointly test innovative vocational training methodologies

– developed the e-booklet Creative Gym  TRAINING EXERCISES FOR CULTURAL MANAGERS: A collection of essays and case studies

The e-booklet Creative Gym is the result of this cooperation and of the variety of narratives from the different partners involved.  It is a collection of voices from a variety of cultural sectors. It is a map of the need for constant exchange, open cooperation among organisations and individuals, of continuous dialogue due to the complexity and challenges that the cultural sector faces.

[1] Source: Upskill project website www.culturalmanagers.com