Foreword

Making sure professionals are equipped with the right sets of skills to face current and future challenges is key - both for the survival of businesses and for securing individual careers.

At European and national levels skills development has been given centre stage in public policy strategies with the aim of combatting unemployment and of safeguarding the quality and competitiveness of our economies.

Professional training agendas are however complex fields of action that require the involvement of a variety of stakeholders and a constant awareness of the developments and needs on the ground.

Creative Skills Europe, the European Platform on Employment and Training in the Audiovisual and Live Performance sectors, is a project which aims at collecting information and at developing tools to help the sector adjust its skills to the realities of the field.

Ran by a partnership of European trade unions, employers’ organisations, and national skills bodies, Creative Skills Europe built on the intelligence of the sector on its evolutions and needs.

It looked at creating national and European synergies, and at inspiring new types of actions, both at company level and in a collective way at sector level. Its objective was to steer discussions on the evolving skills needs in our sectors and to promote initiatives to respond to those needs.

After a first phase of activities (2014-2016) that led to the identification of key trends impacting skills and competences in our sectors, it was decided to pursue the cooperation from the perspective of the concrete needs emerging from the field.

In 2017-2018 four thematic workshops were organised in different European cities on the topics of innovation, HR management, the digital environment and the role of social dialogue.

During those encounters, available intelligence about our labour markets was shared, qualitative analyses on key trends were studied, and good practices of skills solutions were presented by stakeholders representing education and training bodies, institutions, and industry representatives.

The main outcomes of those exchanges are presented in this publication series.