New Pact for Skills to promote skills in the cultural and creative industries

Article published in Voice of the Workers Weekly

The European Commission has recently facilitated the setting up of a large-scale partnership for the Cultural and Creative Industries ecosystem.

The new partnership aims to establish a shared model for skills development in Europe to pool resources and engage in concrete upskilling and reskilling initiatives in the cultural and creative industries.

Learning opportunities and ‘on the job' training will be promoted under this partnership to strengthen the resilience of the sector and equip its professionals with the skills they need. Focus will be on digital, green, entrepreneurial and technical skills as well as on arts and crafts.

The partners involved have agreed on commitments and indicators to improve skills intelligence, new training programmes and the number of people trained. For instance, mutual recognition of training paths across EU countries will be promoted.

This partnership between European umbrella associations, networks, sectoral associations, vocational education and training providers and trade union is based on the Pact for Skills, one of the flagship initiatives under the European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience.

The partnership will contribute and complement the support already available to the industry for reskilling and upskilling, including through several EU funding instruments and the Creative Europe Programme.