KLEROT

Between 2003-2004 the Foundation’s Helsinki Research Centre implemented a research project under the acronym KLEROT designed to analyse the transformation of economic activities and occupational competency in the Finnish cultural and sports sectors and to assess the educational and training needs resulting from these transformations.

KLEROT was financed within the foresight framework of the European Social Fund. The main source of funding was allocated from the budget of the Ministry of Education and Culture: other contributors were the Foundation itself and the Helsinki Polytechnic “Stadia” (since 2008 called the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences). The project team was led by the Foundation’s Research Director Ritva Mitchell.

In the statistical classification of economic activities (NACE) occupations in the cultural and sports sectors are included in the main categories 22 and 92 of the NACE. It has been estimated that in the late 1990s some 50 000 gainfully employed persons in these categories worked in the cultural and sports sectors. It has also been estimated that about 10 per cent of these persons are experiencing pressures stemming from economic and occupational transformations leading, in turn, to pressure to obtain new occupational knowledge and skills. The study analyses the nature of these transformations, identifies the occupational groups under the pressure for further training, forecasts future training needs and presents options for new modes of training and new training programmes.

The project was implemented in two stages. During the first stage, industrial and occupational statistics were analysed to identify the nature of those changes taking place in the economic activities of the cultural and sports sectors. The first stage also used employment statistics and varying registers of business enterprises, cultural and art organisations and educational institutions to identify those ”frontier areas” where the transformations of economic activities induce most occupational pressure to obtain the necessary knowledge and skills.

During the second stage of the study information gathered during the first stage was used to identify experts that could interpret the economic transformations and estimate the needs for new knowledge, skills and education.

Results of the project were published in Finnish in altogether six reports in the publication series of Cupore.