Training Requirements and Key Skills for Artists and creative practitioners to work in participatory settings (TRaKSforA)

After a lot of great discussions and hard work over a two-year period, the TRaKSforA partners from across Europe have finished their work on the main outcomes of the project.

The core of the work is the Self-Assessment Competency Framework for Creative Practitioners who work in educational settings to develop the creativity of children. We hope that it will be of great value to artists and creative practitioners at all stages of their careers, as well as to teachers and other people collaborating with them, training providers or policy makers, and consequently children, whose creative skills development is at the heart of the work.

The document is designed as an interactive pdf which can be used either in electronic or in printed form. The file contains hyperlinks to the relevant pages within the document (such as the list of contents or the lists of competencies and behaviours) to make your navigation faster and easier, as well as live links to other resources online. There are text boxes for you to type in and fields that you can tick, and you can save the document at any point to finish, review or update it later.

Next to the chance to look at a set of desirable competencies and related behaviours and assess these, you will also find advice and practical tips for developing each of the behaviours.

The main publication is accompanied by a spreadsheet which helps you visualise your competencies by presenting them in the form of spider graphs.

You can download the two documents via the links below.

Self-Assessment Competency Framework for Creative Practitioners

Self-Assessment Competency Framework for Creative Practitioners – Spreadsheet

Several of the partners have produced versions in their national languages. You can find the Czech version online too. Others will be added shortly.

We welcome feedback on the framework and how you used it in your practice – feel free to contact us on ICEnet@cceengland.org.

The framework, along with all the other final outcomes of the project, is free to use and share for personal and/or non-commercial purposes, as long as you acknowledge the authors and/or include a link to this page or that of any of the partner organisations where it can be downloaded and more information can be found. We encourage you to let us know about how you used it by dropping us an email. If you would like to use the framework in part or as a whole for commercial purposes, please discuss this with us on ICEnet@cceengland.org. 

Below you can find a short video on the framework and its development. It includes interviews with two project partners, Di Fisher-Naylor from Creativity, Culture and Education, who led on the development, and Theo van Adrichem from Cultuur-Ondernemen, as well as Marie Othilie Hundevadt, a Creative Practitioner.

Another outcome of the partnership, complementing the framework, is the document Case studies exploring the competencies of artists and creative practitioners who work in participatory settings to develop the creativity of children and young people. This is a collection of individual case studies illustrating the competencies identified and highlighting them in practice across Europe. The case studies submitted by some of the partner organisations are linked to specific artists’ projects in various contexts, and they helped to provide insight into the diversity of practices and of understanding and manifesting of the respective competencies. You can view and download the collection of case studies below.

Case studies exploring the competencies of artists and creative practitioners

(second edition, with an extra case study added)

The third outcome of the project is a set of main recommendations for vocational education and training providers who train artists and other creative practitioners for work in participatory settings, based on the work on the project over two years.

Recommendations for vocational education and training providers who train artists and other creative practitioners

More information on the project:

Leonardo partnership project “Training Requirements and Key Skills for Artists and creative practitioners to work in participatory settings“ (TRaKSforA) brings together a strong partnership of organisations from across Europe to develop a Self-Assessment Competency Framework (SACF) for use by artists and other creative professionals working in participatory settings (such as schools, hospitals, community centres, youth centres, cultural houses, etc.). The project involves partners from eight countries: UK, Czech Republic, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Belgium and Croatia, along with other partners supporting the project work, and is carried out from August 2013 to July 2015.

Artists are ever more active as professional trainers, innovators, initiators of change and community development. However, the increasingly active role of artists in education, community development and other areas is not sufficiently supported by their systematic training and professional development in many member states. This project aims on providing an effective tool, the Self-Assesment Competency Framework, which will specifically define the set of professional skills artists need to successfully develop the creative and transversal skills of the communities they work with. The SACF will also provide a common referential point for professional development of artists across member states and will enable future work on improvement of training and development opportunities of artists and creative professionals across EU.

The project partnership will first consider the key skills artists need to work in participatory settings. Exchange of existing competency frameworks and information on training for artists in this specific field will follow, as well as learning from practice of project partners and other institutions in partner countries. This will ensure broad background information which will serve as basis for the SACF and case studies development. Partners will participate at 6 meetings, organise case study visits and roundtable discussions in each partner country, work on SACF development and test the SACF in co-operation with artists. The main outcomes of the partnership work will be a ready-to-use SACF available freely as well as a set of case studies from partner countries, exploring the key competencies identified. Both will be published in July 2015.

List of Leonardo project partners:

Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE), United Kingdom
Cultuur-Ondernemen ('Culture-Entrepreneurship'), the Netherlands
Interacta, Croatia
Oppland fylkeskommune, Den Kulturelle Skolesekken ('Oppland County Council, Cultural Rucksack'), Norway
Společnost pro kreativitu ve vzdělávání ('Association for Creativity in Education'), Czech Republic
T-Tudok, Hungary
Vitamine C, Belgium

Other partners:

Annantalo, Helsingin kulttuurikeskus ('Annantalo Arts Centre, City of Helsinki Cultural Office'), Finland
Drömmarnas Hus ('House of Dreams'), Sweden
Mocca Amsterdam, the Netherlands
U2_Kulturelle Bildung ('Centre for Cultural Education'), Dortmunder U, Germany
Ugdymo plėtotės centras ('Education Development Centre'), Lithuania
Zètema Progetto Cultura, Italy

Six partnership meetings hosted by partner organisations took place: Antwerp, Belgium (October 2013), Prague, Czech Republic (April 2014), Lillehammer, Norway (June 2014), Pécs, Hungary (November 2014), Zagreb, Croatia (March 2015), and Amsterdam/Utrecht, the Netherlands (June 2015).

For a selection of photos from some of the partnership meetings and partners' roundtables, please see the links below:

TRaKSforA Partnership Meeting Lillehammer

Mini Practitioner Forum and TRaKSforA Partnership Meeting Pécs

Roundtables Utrecht and TRaKSforA Partnership Meeting Amsterdam

Roundtables Casgliad 2015, Wales (CCE)

With the support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union.