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Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2014, End date: May 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The Erasmus+ Programme is designed to support Programme Countries' efforts to efficiently use the potential of Europe’s human and social capital, while confirming the principle of lifelong learning by linking support to formal, non-formal and informal learning throughout the education, training and youth fields. The fields of education, training, youth and sport can make a major contribution to help tackle the key challenges that Europe is facing both now and in the next decade. They have been recognised as key drivers within the Europe 2020 Strategy to overcome the socio-economic crisis affecting European countries, to boost growth and jobs and to foster social equity and inclusion. It is the mission of HKU University of the Arts Utrecht to provide innovative learning contexts in which art can be practiced, experienced and researched. The motto of HKU is: The Art of HKU – new practices, new solutions. This statement directly points to our connection with the outside world. Regional and international collaboration is a high priority for the creative industry and for HKU. In recent years the university has entered into alliances with educational and research establishments, companies and regional and national governments in various parts of the world. These alliances comprise student exchanges, internships, lecturer exchanges, research and innovation collaborations, education and applied research and innovation networks and projects. During this Erasmus+ KA103 mobility project, 30 HKU students undertook a traineeship at a variety of organisations and companies: state of the art fashion studios, galleries, visual art spaces or with individual artists, documentary film companies, museums, graphic design and multimedia studios, theatre companies and educational institutions. Furthermore, 17 HKU students studied for one or two semesters at one of HKU’s partner institutions. HKU received 31 Erasmus students from partner institutions. The main objective of international cooperation activities of HKU – being within the framework of Erasmus+ or other programmes - is to achieve an international orientation for its students to participate in an increasingly globalised society. This should lead to an increase of their professional, social and intercultural skills and employability. HKU holds the view that direct individual experience in another cultural, linguistic and educational setting is a very powerful and useful element in the development of a person’s growth both individually and professionally. HKU also focuses on increasing the international dimensions of education itself, through international staff mobility, international curriculum development, internationalisation at home and international projects. During the project period 8 staff members of HKU went abroad for a training or teaching period at a (partner) institution to teach for an international classroom, network, benchmark and share their expertise in curriculum development of design education with international colleagues as well as to acquire knowledge, practical skills and expertise relevant to their current job and supporting their professional development. Improvement of related competences are indicated in the participants reports. HKU received 5 staff members from partner institutions. Through the staff mobility also new partnerships were established. The impact the Erasmus + programme has on our students that joined either a study or internship in Europe is huge. In the area of transversal skills students are especially clear on having learned to be more open and their curiosity to enter new challenges with confidence is evident. We notice that a large percentage of our students start their own small business and for some it has even become more obvious that they want to start their career outside of the Netherlands. For others it stimulates them to pursue a Master course in Europe instead of the Netherlands. At this moment in time we feel it is extremely important that tolerance towards other personal values and behaviours needs attention in educating students. We want to offer our students either the opportunity to stay abroad or have them develop transversal skills in our university through international classrooms and projects with partner institutions in Europe. The dissemination is taking place through our internal weblink, blogs from students, Facebook and logbooks. Also short videos are being made and students who come back from a period abroad present to other students, both in classroom settings as in study abroad events.

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