On September 25th, during the Creative Skills Week 2025, Materahub will help facilitate the workshop “Collaborate to Skill – Building Local Alliances for Creative Upskilling”. This session, part of the EU-funded project SACCORD, will explore the mismatches between offer and demand in the creative sector.
In today’s fast-changing creative landscape, collaboration is one of the most powerful drivers of innovation and resilience. Yet, too often, training providers, cultural organisations, policymakers, and creative hubs work in silos, limiting the potential for collective impact. To address this challenge, the SACCORD project, a co-organiser of Creative Skills Week, is hosting this strategic session dedicated to breaking down barriers and strengthening alliances across the skills ecosystem.
What to Expect from the Session
The workshop will spotlight successful partnerships as models for building stronger, more inclusive, and more adaptive local skills ecosystems. Through open dialogue, participants will explore a range of practical approaches to strengthening these creative networks.
Together, we will consider how to:
Co-design learning journeys that respond to the evolving needs of creatives.
Align institutions with diverse goals around shared priorities.
Develop innovative strategies for pooling resources—whether funding, spaces, or tools—to maximize collective impact.
Champion inclusivity, ensuring that training opportunities are accessible to all creatives, including those often left on the margins.
This workshop supports the European Commission’s flagship Pact for Skills, with a special focus on the Creative Pact for Skills, where Materahub has played an active role since its launch. We will explore how regional initiatives can fuel transformation by aligning local skills strategies with wider European priorities, particularly those linked to the green, digital, and social transitions.
Creative Skills Alliances in Action: Our Speakers
The session will open with a short talk featuring contributions from a fantastic lineup of experts:
Marta Rota & Martin Schwab – University of Arts Linz and SCALExD Project
Gerbrand Bas – Federatie Dutch Creative Industries
Carina Dantas – SHINE 2Europe
Wolfgang Gumpelmaier-Mach – Creative Region Linz & Upper Austria
Simona Martini – Fondazione Fitzcarraldo
Eszter Tóth – University of Debrecen Faculty of Economics and Business
Kristýna Kočová – Creative Prague
Becky Riches – Materahub
Key Questions for a Co-Creative Dialogue
Following the introduction, participants will break into smaller groups to tackle specific local challenges related to establishing creative skills partnerships, such as:
How can we design learning journeys together that truly reflect today’s and tomorrow’s creative skills?
How can different institutions – with different rules and goals – still pull in the same direction?
How do we open doors for creatives who usually don’t show up in training offers?
What clever ways can local partners find to pool funding, spaces, and tools so everyone benefits?
What do we need from the policy level to foster local skills ecosystems?
From European Dialogue to Local Action: The Basilicata Case
Materahub is deeply committed to advancing collaboration as a pathway to lasting impact. In Southern Italy, we are actively working to shape a Regional Skills Partnership in Basilicata, our region—an experimental journey we believe can be adapted and scaled across the country. By sharing this process in a co-creative way, we hope to uncover models and common practices that can inspire others across Europe.
On this point, we can’t tell much more yet, but we promise to return soon with updates.
Do you want to know more about Creative Skills Week 2025?
