"European Design Upgrade: Transnational Capacity Building"

Ukrainian organization-leader: Charitable Fund "K.Fund"

Partners: Brussels Creative (Belgium), Tomi Järvelin Design (Finland)

Budget: 333 033,00 euros (Creative Europe covers 60 %)

European Design Upgrade: Transnational Capacity Building (EDU) – is a skills and mindset elevation interdisciplinary programme. Through Pan-European cooperation it enables cultural and creative players to promote their capabilities to their respective markets. The cultural dialogue established between the participants is called to cross-link designers, artists, IT-specialists, scientists, and entrepreneurs for joint qualitative response to the global challenges projecting local level solutions for business, culture and creative industry (CCI), local society. The requested funds are to be allocated for the full cycle of 3-stage project preparation and implementation in Ukraine, Belgium and Finland concurrently, concluding with global exhibition at DDW 2020. After 3-month Skills Progression session and 3-month Design Lab challenge the participants will meet investors and influencers, either find partnerships for their rapid CCI ideas implementation. The project main goal is to enhance the capacity building of young artists and designers by means of hybrid involvement approach aimed at the very core of innovation process. It encompasses progressive transfer of participants from theory to practical application allowing them to think and act like creative entrepreneurs. Advancement to such a level makes synergy of designers and other stakeholders at local level more probable as well as increases the designers’ competitiveness providing resource for European and Ukrainian markets. This project is the pilot version of the mentioned innovative concept. The lessons and conclusions drawn from the results of the project implementation, feedback from all project participants will be the basis for the analysis of the proposed concept, its improvement and modernization for subsequent iterations. The total duration of training activities of the project does not exceed 1 calendar year. Thus, such courses can be successfully repeated both in the project partner countries and beyond.