Thursday, 25 September
Creative Skills Conference
Across the conference days at CSW2025, you’re invited to mix and match sessions from the Create, Transform, and Regenerate streams, crafting a path that reflects your interests, goals, and role within the cultural and creative sectors.
Whether you’re looking to gain hands-on skills, explore big-picture strategies, or get inspired by bold new ideas, the programme is designed to meet you where you are and take you further.
Venue: Prague Congress Centre
09:00 – 09:30
Registration & Welcome Refreshments
09:30 – 11:00
Projects Marketplace
Dive into a dynamic exchange of ideas at the Regenerate Projects Marketplace. Across three simultaneous stages, 21 proposals will be pitched in fast-paced rounds, offering a snapshot of emerging practices and bold visions across the cultural and creative sectors. Equipped with headphones, the audience navigates seven rounds of 10-minute exchanges—8 minutes of pitch—choosing where to focus their attention. This format fosters serendipitous connections and cross-sector insight, inviting participants to learn, challenge assumptions, and explore new potential collaborations. Project tracks will be announced on site—prepare to move, listen, and evolve.
11:00 – 11:30
Coffee Break
11:30 – 13:00
Parallel Sessions
This panel explores how regional initiatives can drive transformation by aligning local skills strategies with broader European objectives, particularly in the context of the green, digital, and social transitions. The session highlights existing partnerships as models for building resilient, responsive, and inclusive local skills ecosystems. Participants will examine practical pathways for reinforcing cross-sector cooperation and embedding long-term competences into territorial development.
In this session, panelists and audience explore the challenges and opportunities facing the European craft sector. Craft, a sector rich in diversity and deeply linked to heritage, region, culture, and tradition, is undergoing significant changes influenced by economic trends, technological innovation, and shifting market preferences. There is a significant resurgence of interest in handmade, artisanal products, partly driven by an appreciation for traditional craftsmanship, authenticity, making spaces, slow movement, and sustainability. This resurgence is evidenced by the estimated size and value of the European market for crafts and makers. However, challenges such as skill gaps, inadequate training, and a lack of entrepreneurial skills persist. Education and training are key factors to guarantee the future of crafts and creative makers.
Organised in collaboration with EIT Culture and Creativity (EIT CC) and the EIT CC European Craft Academy in 2025.
This session explores how cultural and creative actors can expand their impact through collaboration beyond traditional boundaries. Drawing on examples from sectors such as healthcare and aerospace, it highlights the potential of cross-sectoral alliances to unlock new competences, foster innovation, and address complex challenges. Participants will gain insights into looking outward and on how strategic partnerships can catalyse transformation.
This interactive session reimagines entrepreneurial training to better respond to the evolving demands of the cultural and creative sectors. Participants will join focused discussions on key themes—from youth entrepreneurship to non-formal and lifelong learning—examining how training programmes are developed, recognised, and tailored to market needs. A final round will distil the most relevant transformational skills emerging from the dialogue. Guided by the Working Group on Entrepreneurial Skills of the Creative Pact for Skills, the session offers a platform for shared insights and practical exchange.
13:00 – 14:30
Lunch
14:30 – 16:00
Parallel Sessions
Experience the making process firsthand in this participatory session where craft meets innovation. Guided by craft practitioners and educators, participants will engage in simple making activities that reveal the logic, rhythm, and meaning embedded in traditional techniques. Alongside hands-on exploration, the session offers space to reflect on the learning value of making—how it fosters creativity, patience, and cultural understanding. Materials provided; no prior experience needed.
In this practical session, participants will engage directly with digital tools shaping the cultural and creative sectors. Through guided exercises, attendees will explore AI applications, complete a self-assessment of their digital skills, and test toolkits designed to support data-driven decision-making. Featuring use cases, the workshop invites participants to reflect on their own digital readiness while gaining actionable insights for practice, planning, and audience engagement.
How can we define, communicate, and strengthen the value of cultural and creative work? This session brings together different approaches to understanding impact—from intrinsic cultural value to measurable social, economic, and environmental outcomes. Participants will explore how value creation can guide strategic partnerships, funding models, and investor engagement. Through insights into impact mapping, funding alignment, and context-based reporting, the session offers practical tools for making the full spectrum of CCI impacts visible and actionable. The final discussion invites all participants to reflect on the role of impact in shaping the sector’s future.
