At the beginning of December, the CIM project was involved in the performance and design of the 10th REVEAL conference. The conference, which took place entirely online over two days, was dedicated to the central theme – creativity, innovation and digitalisation at the interface between education, volunteering and business. As one of the key elements, the conference was dedicated to the possibilities of online communication and collaboration to create ideas and innovations which fits almost seamlessly with the CIM approach.

The first day was divided into two general aspects:

The presentation of the three Projects

• • CIM – the aims to develop a new teaching and learning approach for Creativity and Innovation Management in 15 European countries
  • Pitch – The PITCH project offers approaches, learning methods and content with respect to both innovative action and entrepreneurial competence development.
  • Job Bridge – the aims to fill this gap by developing a fully-fledged user-centred approach for validating non-formal and informal learning processes in volunteering activities, including a well proven web-based documentation, both for learners and those supervising them, the “facilitators”.

All projects combined the same aim of creativity and innovation in learning and teaching approaches with different target groups.

Especially the CIM approach was the central element, providing both the method to serve as a prototype for the upcoming workshops in the afternoon and practical examples from the successful piloting for orientation and different opportunities.

The interactive workshop sessions in the afternoon were focusing on 5 different settings:

• • Higher Education on digitalisation, new ways of learning and academia-business collaboration
  • Business (HR and development) on sustainability, circular economy, new ways of learning
  • Adult Education on resilience of the organisation, digitalisation and new ways of learning, culture, community development and cultural heritage
  • Volunteering on mobility, new ways of learning, competence validation
  • In an association (network) of students on new ways of learning, mobilities and business connection

Each of the sessions was supported by an expert from the field and a facilitator to keep the working groups in a “flow” and to give a first insight into the application of Design Thinking in different fields. As a bonus, each of the groups developed a short presentation of their results developed during the collaborative work.

The first day was concluded by various “social moments”, such as a virtual tour of Thessaloniki put together and presented by George and his team, where the conference would normally have taken place. In addition, the British storyteller Nick Hennessey was present as a guest of one of the workshops and as a storyteller in the evening. @Nick, thank you so much for your great stories.

The second day started with the short presentations of the working groups and their results, but the main event was dedicated to the Reveal Awards.

This year the event was all about innovation and creativity, with a call for a project or learning opportunity that displayed creativity and innovation and encouraged collaboration.

The final section of the conference mainly dealt with the possibility to develop new ideas and concepts for new European projects and to use the new networking contacts that had been established during the last two days to create new joint approaches.

In total, the conference was attended by more than 100 participants who actively participated in the conference and the working group sessions, which can be considered a great success under the given circumstances and challenges caused by COVID 19.