XENIA

Info

Title Nurturing Intangible Cultural Heritage for Entrepreneurship
Acronym NICHE

Programme ERASMUS+

Project Number Project Number 2020-1-IS01-KA202-065809

Start – End Date 01/11/2020 – 31/10/2021

Duration 24 months

Action Key Action 2: Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Funding Agency European Commission

Total Project Funding €267.811,00

Project Homepage https://www.nicheproject.eu/

Status Completed

Description

Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is a practice, representation, expression, knowledge/skill considered by the UNESCO to be part of a place’s cultural heritage; it comprises nonphysical intellectual property, such as folklore, customs, beliefs, traditions, knowledge and language.

IEU official papers confirm that Intangible Cultural Heritage is crucially important for socio-economic development:

Council of EU “Conclusions on Cultural Heritage as a Strategic Resource for a Sustainable EU”
EU Commission “Towards an Integrated Approach to Cultural Heritage for EU”
EU Commission “Getting Cultural Heritage to Work for EU”

IICH is more important for the EU economy than the entire automotive sector: over 300,000 people work in the EU cultural heritage sector. Almost 8 million jobs in the EU are indirectly linked to heritage (tourism, interpretation, security). For each direct job, the heritage sector produces 26.7 indirect jobs. This compares with 6.3 indirect jobs created for each direct job in the car industry.

INotwithstanding this great potential, ICH is seldom capitalised as a topic for training to empower professionals to develop ICH-related economic opportunities, as old professions are evolving, and new professions are developing.

IThe objective of NICHE (Nurturing Intangible Cultural Heritage for Entrepreneurship) is to enhance entrepreneurship in the ICH sector by developing innovative training for the underserved cohort of professionals (and prospective ones) who operate in ICH to promote entrepreneurial initiatives in the sector, enhance its competitiveness and sustain its growth.

Project Outcomes

NICHE provides concrete solutions to pressing needs identified at national and EU level through a robust investigation of the field and analysis of the state of the art in the sector of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH).

A. The NICHE Platform as a sustainable Open Educational Resource in various languages, completely OPEN SOURCE available at no cost/fee and without any access restrictions to ensure that results of the project are accessible to all interested parties, stakeholders and target groups.

B. The NICHE OER Platform will host project results stemming from the IOs:

The “Mapping and Benchmarking” result of IO2 that maps the competences of the ICH professionals and benchmarks/links them to the EQF and European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO)
The training content developed in IO3
The policy and practice recommendations at EU level

C. In addition, the NICHE OER platform is the means to deliver the training in eLearning and blended learning modalities to validate the training courses with target groups (in IO3) B) the profile of the ICH professional benchmarked against EQF and ESCO to ensure transparency and “portability” of the competences for the sector

D.The training content, courses and handouts in multiple language versions to enhance the acquisition of skills and competences that are most relevant to the ICH professionals to improve their capacity in leveraging ICH assets as an economic opportunity. The training will be presented in easy to use and user-friendly formats, also compatible with online versions and mobile versions. Partners will rely on the guidelines developed by CEDEFOP on how to use Learning Outcome in the development of the training. This is a crucial element of innovation and relevance of the NICHE project. Also, the NICHE training will be in full compliance with the EQF.