Cluj Future of Work Journal 2: get an update about Cluj Napoca project

The last year was full of important achievements for Cluj Future of Work, leading towards the core of the implementation of most of the actions initially planned.  The preparation of some important activities, that will be furtherly detailed in this section, was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic but a Risk Assessment and Mitigation Plan was immediately prepared by the City of Cluj-Napoca and the Cluj Cultural Centre who are co-managing the project.  

A resilient attitude was immediately developed by the project partners, with most of them representing some of the most affected categories by the job crisis as a consequence of the pandemic  emergency (such as cultural and creative industries employees and informal workers).Cultural actors, universities, businesses and IT clusters adhered massively to the platform Un Singur Cluj[1], an independent initiative launched by individuals and entities active in the festival sector and supported by the Cluj Cultural Centre and the City of Cluj Napoca. The active participation of many project partners to this initiative was also positive for Cluj Future of Work, because it created a further arena for cooperation, deepening personal relations and encouraging people to cooperate at a wider scale. 

This strengthened climate of mutual trust was decisive also for readjusting collaboratively some of the actions initially planned to be implemented in 2020, bringing the view beyond the current hardships.
The action of rethinking the way of implementing most of the project actions in a year dominated by uncertainty, as for instance the Culturepreneurs programme initially foreseen with onsite classes but then implemented totally online in its first part, was important also to test how these innovative measures can be durably included in the urban strategies for improving skills of young professionals and potential actors of the cultural and creative economy. 

“Not often one gets to witness the exact behaviour from an intended theory of change in a multi-actor arena. To see the level of cooperation and commitment from cultural and creative industry leaders in Cluj-Napoca to increase the city’s preparedness for the COVID-19 emergency state was an humble indicator that our UIA initiative has made an inspired bet to invest in this area and social capital” says Anamaria Vrabie, director of Cluj-Napoca Urban Innovation Unit within Cluj Cultural Centre and co-manager of Cluj Future of Work

Cultural and creative industries are among the ones most hit by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the estimation made by Eurostat[1], the COVID-19 crisis may affect about 7.3 million cultural and creative jobs across the EU, representing 3.7% of total employment at EU level. There is no doubt that in an European landscape where the more fragile players, such as young people, self-employed and potential entrepreneurs, are suffering the consequences of the current situation of crisis, the need for education on more sustainable business models in cultural and creative industries is on the rise. This assumption can contribute to explain the high number of applications received after the launch in May 2020 of the call for Culturepreneurs, the entrepreneurial educational program for the cultural and creative sector promoted by Cluj Future of Work.

Culturepreneurs is developed and coordinated by the Cluj Cultural Centre, in continuation with the previous editions of the programme that in the framework of Cluj Future of Work involves a series of partners, each of them responsible for the management of one of the four courses composing Culturepreneurs.  

Out of 106 candidatures received in total, 69 applicants were selected to take part to the incubation program, whose activities expected to take place in 2020 were completely redesigned to be carried out online, instead than with traditional onsite classes.

Since March to July 2020, the project partners ARIES Transylvania IT Cluster, Arts and Design University, Cluj IT Cluster, Transylvania Furniture Cluster and Transylvania International Film Festival worked together with the Cluj Cultural Centre, that led the co-design of the entire process, to create the curricula and to decide how to deliver the training activities of the different learning modules. The representatives of these partners were included in the selection committee, which interviewed each candidate in the second half of July 2020 and evaluated them taking into account, among different criteria, the feasibility of the entrepreneurial project in the cultural and creative sector proposed in the application form, the potential impact at urban and community level of the project to be implemented after the Culturepreneurs programme, social competences (curiosity, resilience and communication) and entrepreneurial skills (such as vision and strategic thinking).  

Designing and equipping a physical space to test the use of innovative technologies is a decisive step to make the innovation produced by projects as Cluj Future of Work visible to the city. This space can be recognized as a playground by potential entrepreneurs in cultural and creative sector, but also to the local, national and international community of academics and start-uppers who can be interested in creating new partnerships with local innovators. 

Equipping the Labs hosted by CREIC (Centrul Regional de Excelență pentru Industrii Creative – Regional Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries), that will be used by the participants of the specialized modules of Culturepreneurs to refine and test their project ideas from January 2021 until the end of the project, was one of the main actions of Cluj Future of Work in 2020. The City of Cluj Napoca actively collaborated with many project partners in a long acquisition process, that highlighted some of the most common obstacles in a process of public procurement for innovation.  

First of all, representatives of Cluj IT Cluster, Transylvania Furniture Cluster and Transylvania International Film Festival with contributions from the Arts and Design University compiled a list of the equipment to be bought for the CGI&VFX Lab, Design Development Lab and Work 4.0 and Machine Learning Lab and collaborated with the City of Cluj Napoca in writing the technical documents for the tender to be published on the national platform for public acquisitions called SICAP.   

Each Lab will be functional to the realization of the laboratorial activities of specialized modules of the Culturepreneurs programme:

• The CGI&VFX Lab will host the activities of the Innovative Audiovisual Content module, animated by Transylvania International Film Festival. The Lab will explore the use of digital-generated images and visual effects for a wide range of purposes. The Lab is equipped with Motion Capture System, 360° Panoramic Camera System, Rendering Farm System software and computers for design and CGI. 95% of the equipment listed in the tender were successfully acquired and are correctly installed at CREIC, ready to be used in the first months of 2021.
• The Design Development Lab will host the activities of the Personalised Design Module, animated by Transylvania Furniture Cluster. The equipment of the Lab will be used for testing and validation of new products and services in the furniture industry. The Lab is equipped with machines for product development, laptops, software and VR glasses. The equipment were correctly bought and installed at the CREIC, ready to be used in January 2021.
• The Work 4.0 and Machine Learning Lab will host the activities of the Gamification module, led by Cluj It Cluster.  The Lab will be equipped with computers, sensors, hardware involving augmented and virtual reality, robotics and software useful to simulate automatized movement. The acquisition procedure was not yet completed and the installation of the equipment is due to be completed by March 2021.

The adaptation to the safety rules during the autumn months in which Covid-19 hit harder in Cluj-Napoca made the installation of the equipment and the management of the spaces rented at CREIC more complex than expected. Nevertheless, the delays were limited and all the activities in the Labs will start in the first months of 2021. A special attention was given to the elaboration of safety procedures and to the creation of systems which can ensure the respect of personal distancing rules and the rotating presence of a limited number of students in the Labs.

The collaboration between the co-management team of the project and the partners in charge of listing the equipment to be purchased in the framework of the public procurement process created an useful dynamic to reason on how to make the Labs useful not only to the participants of the Culturepreneurs programme, but also to other groups of interest, such as schools and universities, businesses and stakeholders active in Cluj-Napoca. The objective is to exploit the equipment as much as possible and foster the access to subjects, such as film companies or furniture and design factories, that may be interested in continuing to use them after the end of Cluj Future of Work.

“The equipment that we are buying for the Labs is now more needed than before the pandemic: they can be decisive for increasing digital skills for all. Having this infrastructure and the curricula of Culturepreneurs can give more opportunities to local talents who don’t have a lot of places where to grow their ideas: with the help of this program we can create an ecosystem of people who can generate startups and business opportunities in Cluj-Napoca” says Ovidiu Cîmpean, Director of Investment and Local Development Department and co-manager of Cluj Future of Work, City of Cluj Napoca[1]

In the meanwhile, the City allowed the students of the Faculty of Theatre and Movies of the Babeș-Bolyai University to use the Labs and is going to ensure better accessibility for all to the CREIC, located seven kilometers far from the city centre, through increasing from January 2021 the frequency of the shuttle bus connecting the city centre to the structure.

A wider reflection on making the Labs model sustainable at economic level also after the end of the Culturepreneurs activities is ongoing among the partners. Opening up this reflection to other innovative stakeholders active at local and national level can foster a debate on how to make innovation hubs a decisive part of the urban fabric, as happened in other cities in Europe in recent years. What is happening in cities as Barcelona, Amsterdam and Turin, just to mention few examples of urban contexts in which science parks and startup incubators are playing a decisive role for urban growth, may be particularly inspiring: these cities are testing effective management models shared by public and private actors, with these last facilitating connections within their business networks, but are also making their innovation hubs crucial places to attract talents internationally and retain them at urban level, with ripple effect in terms of urban innovation.

Fostering the access to work for informal workers is one of the priorities of Cluj Future Of Work, carried out through a participatory process involving the Roma community living in the landfill area of Pata Rât aimed at removing the most relevant obstacles to the access to decent jobs through offering training activities for the establishment of new enterprises and improving local welfare services.

Between January and February 2020, the participatory budgeting process in the Pata Rât community was completed, with a series of consultative and informative meetings attended by 90 local residents. At the end of the process, five ideas emerged as priorities on which invest the resources dedicated by Cluj Future of Work for improving the working conditions of informal workers. Most of the ideas emerged were related to the creation of better services to reduce the gap between Pata Rât and the rest of the city. Actions as ensuring a better access to wi-fi connection, the creation of public transport routes liaising the informal settlement to the city centre or the installation of sanitary infrastructure were presented by the residents of Pata Rât as pre-conditions for a better access to work, but also as a way to improve the life conditions of the people living in the informal settlement.

The Covid-19 emergency dramatically highlighted the lack of basic services, such as running water, in the Pata Rât area. For that reasons, the City of Cluj Napoca and the FoW project partner responsible for the project’s activities in Pata Rat ADI-ZMC, decided to reshape the priority interventions to be carried out in the area focusing on the elements much needed by the local community to face the impact of the pandemic emergency.

The installation of two sanitary containers with showers, sinks and flush toilets and the distribution of food packs to the residents of Pata Rât were quickly carried out, giving immediate relief to the residents during the first phase of the emergency. Structural interventions, such as the installation of the hardware infrastructure for covering the whole area with wireless internet connection, were then made and are contributing to pose the basis for economic and social recovery in an area where most of the informal workers saw their sources of income considerably reduced during the pandemic.

Reskilling informal workers is one of the top priorities emerged by the action of dialogue carried out on the ground by the facilitators constantly in touch with the local community of Pata Rât, where some services such as second chance schooling are already delivered by other NGOs and institutions but are less known by the population.

The support to the creation of new business activities will be particularly important for economic recovery in Pata Rât. For that reason, at the end of 2020 the process of selection of eight business ideas (out of 14 candidatures received) to be incubated was completed with the final selection of new potential entrepreneurs of the community, who will get support in drafting a business plan and starting up a small business activity. In the framework of Cluj Future of Work the project ideas selected will receive a tailor-made assistance to start simple business activities needing a small amount of money to be launched, such as delivery services, flowers selling or construction activities, but strongly connected to emerging markets in Cluj-Napoca. 

The combination between the delivery of basic services and the support to the creation of small enterprises can be decisive in the post-pandemic period to promote new integrated policies for the residents of Pata Rât, contributing at the same time to improve the welfare policies for other deprived groups residing in Cluj-Napoca and stimulating the creation of similar integrated policies also at metropolitan, regional and national level.

During the upcoming months Cluj Future of Work will continue the implementation of some of the most important actions of the projects. The specialized modules of the Culturepreneurs programme will start the in-class courses at the three Labs at CREIC, where all the equipment will be installed and rehearsed in order to be fully operational at the beginning of the laboratorial activities. The entrepreneurial projects in cultural and creative sector presented by the students will be furtherly refined and fine-tuned, in view of the next Pitching session which will take place in March 2021 that will reward five projects with tailor-made marketing support for internationalization. 

Opening up the project to wider horizons and communities is the main objective of Cluj Future of Work for 2021. The Cluj Cultural Centre is going to launch an experimental programme for facilitating and microfinancing activities aimed at rethinking work practices. The re:form programme will provide a financial support, with grants ranging between 3000 and 5000 euros, to support cultural organizations willing to test innovative work  practices rethinking traditional organizational methods. This innovation fellowship will contribute to reimagining work, one of the main objectives of Cluj Future of Work, and will provide useful elements to be replicated and transferred to other cultural and creative industries at the end of the project.

A strong focus will be given to activities showcasing the results of the actions carried out at local level and raising awareness on the challenges related the future of work among different types of public. The major event organized to this end will be the ZAIN Creativity Festival, taking place in October 2021 in different locations in Cluj Napoca. Community events involving the cultural and creative sector of the city, exhibitions, public conferences and workshops will mobilize a wide audience around the future challenges of work in culture, putting the main elements emerged by Cluj Future of Work at the core an open urban conversation on the topic.

As highlighted by this second Journal, Cluj Future of Work is effectively changing the narrative on a future of work that is closer to us than expected, contributing to see it, not as something scary but as a challenge to be faced in a collaborative way. The innovative actions carried out in Cluj Napoca show how the cooperation among all the different actors of the innovation ecosystem is crucial to generate new entrepreneurial ideas and approaches, that can be decisive to help the local community to deal with the uncertainty of the current historical epoch. With its capacity of inspiring some of the categories more at risk in the current and future scenarios, such as workers and potential entrepreneurs in cultural and creative sector and deprived groups, Cluj Future of Work is confirming its originality in the European landscape while showing a good potential for replicability and dialogue with other similar urban initiatives at European and global level.