Post on 11-Mar-2023
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the
information contained therein.
Introduction
We live in the most developed society of all times, at least according to the level of technical
improvements. It seems natural to find ways how to connect art and science, new achievements of
humankind with one of the oldest efforts of humans – to express oneself by means of art. Even
though this field of interaction is not commonly diffused among population of Europe, it starts with
no doubt affecting people across the Europe. New media art and usage of new technologies on the
field of art are becoming constantly more often used by various kinds of artists. There are some
boundaries of this approach as the technical difficulty, complexity and sometimes the unreachability
of new technological tools for artistic public. The VETLICAT project (acronym for Vocational and
Educational Training, Linking Creativity and Advanced Technology) tries to respond to these
challenges – to educate artists, cultural managers, directors and all the people connected to art in
using new technologies. The project is implemented by consortium of 6 partners from Netherlands,
Czech Republic, Germany, Portugal, Cyprus and Slovenia. Altogether the partners bring knowledge of
theoretical and practical virtue in the mentioned area by means of lectures, workshops and didactical
materials (academic papers, videos and ebooks). The whole project is based on the transfer of
innovative practises developed by Waag Academy, institutions devoted to connecting art and
technology. With assistance of Dutch and German partner we are transferring their know-how to
improve the level of understanding of usage of science at the contemporary scene of art.
Within this publication we are going to describe our experience with realisation of the project, as
well as the difficulties we ran into, and transfer to you this experience which you could employ in
your possible effort of doing such a job.
First Phase: Setting the Foundations
Since this project was unique and premier experience for all the partners, the consortium needed to
settle basic principles, rules and plan for the whole action. Several meetings of all partners took
place, which defined the gradual steps and exact content of the VETLICAT project. We set the
deadlines and aims. It is important to accent importance of personal meetings of partners which
could not be replaced by any electronic communication. All these meetings played very important
role in the realisation of VETLICAT, since the most important topics were discussed and the plan of
the following months was set.
Personal aspect of these planning sessions has been an ongoing influence on both organisers and the
project itself. With the transfer of this innovative concept also personal experience of handling
various problems in different ways came along. These findings are rooted in the individuality of
everybody and specific national character. The particularity of every partner indicated very important
feature of the whole transfer – individuality of each national environment and necessity to follow
this principle within the momentum of the transfer.
Within this framework we defined the schedule of the project, all outputs, events happening within
the project and the promotion of it. The individual transfer was left to each partner.
Second Phase: Actual Transfer
As we indicated, the actual transfer was realized in four countries: Czech Republic (represented by
International Center for Art nad New Technologies, CIANT), Portugal (represented by Clube Português
de Artes e Ideias, CPAI), Cyprus (represented by Cultural and Research Foundation, ARTos) and
Slovenia (represented by Kulturno izobraževalno društvo, KIBLA). Altogether the consortium
transferred 6 different modules.
Within VETLICAT project we transferred and adapted these modules:
1) Fablab module (partialy)
2) Future of Art & Science Collaborations
module
3) Education & heritage module
4) Exergaming module
5) FabSchool module
6) PhDO module
The content of particular transferred modules within the project is described in details on the web
page of the project and other publications related to them, so they won´t be presented them here.
What we want to describe is the way how we transferred the modules so we could offer to the
reader the possibility to gain experience from our work.
Very important feature of the whole transfer lies in the specific context of every partner country.
Therefore we decided to let each partner absolutely free for the actual transfer. Every partner
obtained the conception of each module and its implementation depended on them.
In relation to the transfer we had to considered various topics, as the way and type of
communication with the attenders, using international or national language, length of the event or
content of the actual module (regarding actual needs in partner´s country, for example necessity of
practical experience with new technology, i.e. low level of knowledge about Serious gaming). There
are many aspects which have to be considered. One of the most important in relation to the
attendance of the event or width of impact of the project is the choice of venue for an event, which
addresses the target group. Such a place should be suitable for such an occasion. As practical
example we can see placing Exergaming module in Czech Republic to Era svět, place traditionally
dedicated to social issues, which helped us to address this module to more people and much easily.
In our experience we can recognise very different approaches to transfer of particular modules.
CIANT in Czech Republic really focused on both practical and theoretical part of the education on the
field, combining workshops and lectures. Moreover, within the workshops the organisers usually
concentrated on presenting low-cost and high-cost options of using modern technology, which is
very important for broader use of such a tool. Especially this was important move in relation to the
fact that the attenders of the individual actions were not really educated on the field. As an example
we can mention using Iphone instead of expensive 3Dscan.
Whereas CIANT focused on public and artistic community, CPAI oriented on research community.
Operating within the VETLICAT framework the PhDO module sought to overcome the barriers by
connecting cultural and creative professionals with people working with advanced technologies and
in Research and Development (R&D). The PhDO Lisbon seminar provided networking opportunities
bringing professionals together to identify points of contact and to share working methodologies. It
was anticipated that this network would develop realistic insights into the process of preparing,
applying and undertaking research in the creative sector.
Cyprian process was again slightly different. The purpose of the FabSchool was to create a new
culture based on curiosity-innovation-and-skilled people to maximize the capacity of their talent and
bring society one step forward. This type of new behaviour needed to be started from young age,
therefore ARTos structured it in a way that would keep on evolving.
They worked with different target groups (kids, teens and teachers). The important feature was their
experience with the others. This was a way how to maximize the effort and the money spent in order
to get the biggest impact in the society and reach a bigger crowd.
In Maribor, Kibla organisation decided to build their module on discussion with possible attenders
and broader public. Through casual talks with potential participants – education and culture
professionals, creatives and the citizens of Maribor – we carefully developed the format of the
module based on the input we received – a DIY (Do It Yourself) oriented workshop that deals with
public space. When thinking about the content, the question of electronic heritage was often raised.
On this basis they decided to develop the module as a workshop dealing with recycling disused
electronics and constructing devices that have the potential to bring added value to overlooked
public spaces.
Teachers Teens Kids
Kids Teens
FabSchool
This is just a simple example of different way of thinking of implementation
of these modules to national and cultural environment. To sum up, it is
more than important to be aware of different approaches in different
states. The most important fact we discovered within the consortium was
that the people were really interested in the field of art and science and
they did not have enough or sufficient opportunities to educated on this
field and the VETLICAT project finally offered them this possibility.
Third Phase: Evaluation
The last phase of the VETLICAT project is based on evaluation. We used various methods reaching
this aim, especially we studied the composition and preferences of attenders (using questionnaires
and social networks as Facebook). Our personal experience (knowing of good and bad of what
happened) constitutes important part of our evaluation process. We discussed this whole process on
all-partner meeting in Lisbon, after finishing the first year of the project.
The interpretation of our varying experience constituted significant aspect of our evaluation. For
example, ARTos experienced very specific situation. Innovation and new practices are difficult to
train, teach or share information with others. This fact is partly caused by different origin, since
everybody was coming from a different environment and discipline. Even though the execution was
successful, the organisers noticed that their over-enthusiasm was taking them somewhere else so
they had to re-adjust our approach and do less "spectacular or strange things". Finally this gave a
good outcome and depth to our approach. These results were shared with all partners while
mentoring the others and view how the "change" was taking place on each case.
At the figure n. 1, you can see the portion of participants of the first half of the project. From overall
number of 2156 attenders men constituted 1657, women 367 and children 132. The age composition
was based on people between 19 and 35 year-old (80%), then the age group of 35 and more follows
(constituted 35%). Children up to 18 years were represented by 7% of the whole number of
participants. It is very interesting to mention the number of new comers, which amounted to 92% of
all attendees.
Redefining the concept is sometimes necessary, if you don´t meet your goals. Fortunately, this was
case of only one of the partner. The rest of the consortium settled right format, which was
successful. On the other hand, small problems always occur. With different target groups there are
different expectations and ways how to handle the groups. In case of work with children prepare for
permanent activity, you have to entertain them all the time, involve them into the process. We
experienced that on Kyber Kids (workshop of modern technologies for children within Fablab) as well
as within Fabschool (which ARTos experience roots from).
We recommend everybody to prepare step-by-step plan of the event (it is more difficult in the case
of workshop, less in the case of lecture which depends especially on the moderator, after the
discussion or lecture started).
For the evaluation it is not really easy to persuade the visitors to fill the questionnaires up. They have
to be devised very well, leading the attender quickly through the document. It is important not to
force the visitors to fill up everything, also make it clear and as simple as possible.
Figure n. 1: Participants
Men
Women
Children
Conclusion
VETLICAT project is offering various kinds of experience and added value. Its primary aim is to
support knowledge of broad public in using art and science together to express oneself. The second
goal consists of delivering our experience with the transfer to you, readers of this ebook. You can be
the one who will continue in our effort to educate artists in using new scientific achievements, in
connecting art, new technologies and people.
Our consortium learnt how inspiring cooperation of various international partners can be. Different
approaches to promotion, to organisation of an event and primarily to perceiving art has been
enriching us throughout the project. At the time we are expecting the second part of project, which
will focus especially on disseminating of all our activities and other continuation of the VETLICAT
project.
The main challenge for us lies in the way how we assure this will not be just a single action, but
sustainable activity. We are about to start the trend which influence artistic community around
European Union.