Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Develop and apply methods to support the use of arts in education and interventions to foster cultural awareness and expression and to assess their impacts on the development of competences and inclusion of all children and young people.
• Inform policies, programmes and actions using arts in education and contributing to foster cultural awareness and expression, identify existing gaps and effective actions to reach most children and young people and develop recommendations.

Arts in education and developing cultural awareness and expression - one of the key competences for lifelong learning^[1] have value in themselves. They are also used to develop creativity, innovation, critical and design thinking, communication, collaboration and intercultural skills and, more broadly, for inclusive education and training systems, democracy and civic engagement, but stronger evidence is needed to better understand and assess these impacts. Research evidence is also missing on whether, and how, education and training systems have capacity to support learners in developing cultural awareness and expression.

Proposals should support policymakers and professional development providers in identifying effective actions and gaps in their systems, and better understanding how their investments could be improved. Proposals should include a lifelong learning perspective (early childhood education and care, school, vocational education and training and higher education, non-formal learning), and assess national, regional and local support for partnerships, for example between education institutions and arts and cultural heritage organisations.

Proposals are expected to contribute to the New European Bauhaus (NEB) initiative^[2] by interacting with the NEB Community, NEBLab and other relevant actions of the NEB initiative through sharing information, best practice, and, where relevant, results. Clustering and cooperation with other selected projects under this call and other relevant projects are strongly encouraged. International cooperation is encouraged, especially with EU Neighbourhood and accession countries.

[1] European Commission, Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, Key competences for lifelong learning, Publications Office, 2019, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2766/291008

[2] https://europa.eu/new-european-bauhaus/index_en