The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), and specifically the CreativeTechnologies Learning Lab (http://ctll.e-ce.uth.gr) research group, is organising a summer school on innovation in creative industries in the Western Balkans. The summer school is organized from 3 to 5 July 2024 at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering building, Sekeri and Hayden, in Volos, Greece. The summer school will be attended by higher education teachers and representatives of creative industries from the Western Balkans, namely Bulgaria, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, and North Macedonia.
Participants will put into practice design thinking, a deeply human-centered method for generating innovation that aims to design solutions to difficult challenges, even when these are not apparent at first glance. The summer school will highlight how design thinking encourages the production of original projects and solutions in the creative industries. Participants will apply good design thinking practices to understand user needs through immersion and observation, problem definition, ideation, prototyping, and solution evaluation.
The summer school is part of the research project DigitCreche: Digital Transformation in the Western Balkans Education. The project seeks to improve the competitiveness of creative and cultural industries in the Western Balkans through innovation skills development and digital transformation. The project is funded by the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education programme of the European Commission which aims to collaborate on the transfer of know-how from the European Union to the Western Balkans.