The first meeting of the Digi Culture project

On October 04-05 2018, the first meeting of the project Digital Culture - Improving the digital competences and social inclusion of adults in creative industries took place in Timisoara. The host was the Politehnica University of Timisoara, coordinating partner of the project, who organized the meeting within the University's e-Learning Center.

15 teachers, researchers and administrative staff from the project partners participated (Universita Degli Studi Roma Tre – Italy, Aalborg Universitet – Danemarca, Universitaet Graz – Austria, Dublin City University – Irland, TM2021 - Asociația Timișoara Capitală Culturală Europeană – Romania, JME Associates Ltd – UK, National Association of Distance Education – Lithuania and Politehnica University of Timisoara)

The Digital Culture project aims to create a sustainable and effective educational program dedicated to adults with low digital skills and those with low qualifications involved in the creative industries sector in Romania, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Lithuania, United Kingdom and Ireland.

Among the objectives, we mention:

• Raising awareness of the need for training in the field of digital skills for creative industries.
• Creating an integrated online and mobile virtual learning Hub.
• Designing, developing and delivering the course "Digital skills and social inclusion for creative industries and culture", a blended learning course and a complete online course (MOOC).
• Improving the achievement and recognition of digital skills through formal and informal learning by introducing online assessment of digital skills and open standards for adult education in the creative industries.

During the meeting in Timisoara, further steps to be taken in the project were established. Each partner presented their team and activity, after which Dr. Diana Andone, the project coordinator presented the main objectives and terms of the project. A conceptual guide to digital skills was discussed afterwards, and also the social inclusion in the creative industries, followed by the presentation of the future virtual hub, a platform for the online and mobile environment, developed and maintained by the UPT team. After this part, the topic of online assessments and open digital badges was presented. The meeting ended with administrative and management discussions. The team of the e-Learning Center was responsible for producing promotional materials and explanatory videos, testimonial type, having in the foreground the participants of the meeting.

Dr. Diana Andone, the project coordinator and director of the ID / IFR and eLearning Center within UPT, told us that: “We are very excited and happy that we won this project and that we had the opportunity to start the activities within it. The subject of creative industries is one that interests us in recent years, being involved in a series of projects that more or less touch on this topic. In these projects we found a deficiency of artists, of creative people, both in digital skills, but not only. We believe that, together with our partners, we can support these creative people, to help them develop their skills and be able to integrate into the social landscape specific to each country, but also to the European Union as a whole. An additional impetus for us is the support we consider to offer in the preparation of 2021, when Timisoara will be the European Capital of Culture, the TM2021 Association being also a partner in the project. ”