According to Eurostat, the COVID-19 crisis may affect about 7.3 million cultural jobs across the EU. In order to support the cultural sector in Europe with the promotion of lifelong learning activities amidst the economic crisis brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, the European project Performers Go Online has just started.
This project pays great attention to the difficulties that the sector has encountered during the last year and it intends to create synergies with the European Union’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis by fostering social inclusion and development of crucial skills.
It will train culture professionals, specifically performing artists, in the audiovisual technical area regarding the in-home production of artistic contents, something that took place during the first general lockdown in spring 2020 and might happen again.
Furthermore, Performers Go Online will address the creation of teaching materials tailored for artists on how to promote their work and get in touch with different stakeholders in the European cultural sector. In doing so, Performers Go Online will create a transnational cultural network that includes private companies, NGOs, schools and cultural organisations for digitally skilled artists to exploit. At the same time, the project will be able to raise awareness of the difficult situation they have been facing so far.
One of the main goals of Performers Go Online is to develop skills that can considerably help performers during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through the 1st e-learning course, Performing Digitally, artists will be able to boost their creativity thanks to the newly learned technical skills, and more importantly despite the difficulties caused by the pandemic. Furthermore, thanks to the activities of the second e-learning course, Promoting Digitally, the project will empower performers on how to self-promote their work online and interact with relevant organisations in the cultural sectors (private companies, NGOs, schools and other cultural entities). These will be mapped and grouped starting from the 5 participating countries of the project: France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Germany. The results of the project will also greatly help raise awareness of the situation regarding the current struggles of the cultural sector across both stakeholders and the general public. Overall, the objectives of the project include the creation of sustainable and resilient opportunities for the cultural sector to continue to thrive in case of new lockdowns being imposed in the future, specifically through the promotion of social inclusion and digital education.
Performers Go Online highly values the importance of digital skills, all the more so after the massive digitalisation that has been happening in Europe across many different sectors during the last year. In particular, the project clearly bears in mind the objectives of the Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027). Indeed, the two e-learning courses will be available online and will focus on boosting the digital and technical capacities of artistic performers, thus addressing the relative digitalisation of this sector. The project will in fact support then increasing adoption of digital tools in the area of innovative and inclusive education and it will promote the use of innovative digital tools for learning as drivers for improvement in lifelong learning of performing artists.
In the next months, we will recruit 30 performers willing to attended the online courses and enhance their filmmaking and digital marketing skills.
For further information Performers Go Online.