The Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted young people’s economic and employment opportunities, accentuating existing barriers and difficulties faced by youth and in particular by those not in employment or education (NEETs). The employment rate in the EU among young people in 2020 was -2.8 percentage points compared to pre-pandemic 2019. In 2021, a majority of the EU Member States hadn’t fully recovered, as the employment rate for young people was still below the rate of 2019.
In an effort to support young NEETs and promote youth entrepreneurship – in particular, the cultural and creative entrepreneurship – 6 organisations across Europe have joined forces with the aim to create a non-formal learning ecosystem to entice, engage and equip NEETs with the necessary skills to enter the cultural and creative economy, and to allow their creativity, entrepreneurial and business skills to bloom.
The Young Cultentrepreneurs project aims to: raise the capacity of youth workers to support youth cultural and creative entrepreneurship; motivate and activate youth in NEET situation to channel their creative and innovation capital towards entrepreneurial ideas for the cultural and creative economy; equip youth with skills (digital, entrepreneurial, creative) through a non-formal learning approach; empower youth by providing them with the opportunity to produce and share their work.
As part of the Young Cultentrepreneurs project, a Handbook for Youth Workers will be developed, aiming to acquaint them with what is cultural and creative economy, how youth can steer their innovation in cultural and creative entrepreneurship, how to integrate concepts in their work and also guide young people, with the ultimate aim to reap the benefits of cultural and creative entrepreneurship for labour market inclusion of young NEETs.
Furthermore, the Young Cultentrepreneurs Course will be developed in order to engage, inspire and unleash the youth potential for the cultural and creative economy. The course will be a blended learning experience and will be available in six languages to be piloted in Poland, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Sweden to a total of 80 young persons aged 18-29 in NEET situation.
The young people participating in this course will present their project journey and showcase their ideas and works in an online publication that will be available, the “Young Cultentrepreneurs scrapbook for cultural and creative economy: Meet the innovative young minds”.
The Young Cultentrepreneurs project is funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union and is implemented by six organisations from five EU countries: Stowarzyszenie Integracja i Rozwoj (Poland), KMOP – Social Action and Innovation Centre (Greece), ARTIT (Greece), APROXIMAR (Portugal), INCOMA (Spain) and SWIDEAS (Sweden). For more information, you can visit the project’s website: www.youngcult.eu .