The importance of developing entrepreneurial skills in young people is well established as both a means to economic growth, as well as to enabling young people to achieve the goals they set out for themselves. With the emergence of innovative social enterprise models, now more than ever entrepreneurship programmes can empower young people to generate positive impact at individual and community level. However, while enterprise centres and VET institutions struggle to engage with young people, tens of thousands participate voluntarily in youth group activities, especially in the creative, performing and digital arts, presenting a clear opportunity to widen the impact of entrepreneurship education. The problem? The majority of youth workers, lack the knowledge, skills and confidence to teach entrepreneurship. YEA has been carefully structured to find new ways to integrate high quality entrepreneurship education into existing youth services and structures by training youth workers. To achieve this we will: a. Establish 4 Youth Entrepreneurship through Arts REGIONAL ALLIANCES, bringing together key youth, enterprise, and social policy stakeholders to explore best practice in integrating entrepreneurship education into creative arts youth work, devising individual and collective commitments to action in a YEA ACTION PLAN; b. Create, publish and promote the “Youth Entrepreneurship through Arts Tool kit” to encourage the creation of further Alliances across Europe. c. Develop and publish a course curriculum and learning materials to train youth workers to effectively engage the young people they work with in entrepreneurship education. d. Test, publish and strongly promote the course, to facilitate its inclusion in mainstream youth work provision. YEA will be delivered by six organizations from UK, Ireland, France and Malta with a strong cross-sector focus. 1. Dungannon Enterprise Centre, the principal supplier of entrepreneurship education and training in South Tyrone, Northern Ireland. 2. RIDC a hub organization working for community development and responsible for youth work services in Roscommon, Ireland. 3. Beam Creative Network, a youth work organization engaging over 100,000 young people in arts and drama programme, exploring issues such as diversity, cultural identity and conflict resolution. 4. Momentum, an accredited enterprise training centre with a specialization in online and blended learning. 5. Musique de Nuit Diffusion a cultural centre in Bordeaux working with disadvantaged youth. 6. Vismednet, a Maltese youth work organization whose programmes emphasise the validation of informal and nonformal learning. YEA represents a new generation of project that treats entrepreneurship as a transversal skill and a mind set which empowers young people to recognise and solve problems, create value and design sustainable initiatives. Such an approach can be used in any field the young people chooses to apply it to, creating innovation in private or public sectors, at individual or community level. As a result of our project: - hundreds of young people (18 – 30 yr olds) will strengthen their entrepreneurial mindset and acquire concrete entrepreneurial skills, manifested in the development of a proposal for a cultural project or creative initiative which is innovative, sustainable and ready to attract funding. - Enterprise providers will find new ways of engaging with hard-to-reach young people, often from disadvantaged backgrounds. - Youth work and Creative Arts organizations will acquire key skills to integrate entrepreneurship mindset and skills as part of their services. - Communities will experience increase in social and knowledge capital, with young people more empowered as leaders of change in general, especially those who go on to successfully implement their cultural project. - Stakeholders in the region will understand and actively support integrated approach to ensuring high quality entrepreneurship education for more and more young people.