Cluj Future of Work — Creative Industries Urban Lab

Cluj Future of Work (November 2018 – October 2021) was a European Regional Development Fund project (total budget: €5,600,000; ERDF contribution: €4,429,450) led by the City of Cluj-Napoca. It addressed a structural mismatch: approximately 2,000 Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) graduates leave Cluj-Napoca's universities each year, yet only 7 % find employment in their trained field. The project piloted a transdisciplinary model that bridges CCI talent with Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KBS) — IT, outsourcing, finance — through shared laboratories, joint prototyping, and co-incubation. Three fully equipped laboratories were established at the Regional Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries (CREIC), providing co-creation, prototyping and business-incubation space. The flagship Culturepreneurs programme delivered intensive training in creative entrepreneurship; all 51 participants who reached the pitching stage received a €1,200 award. Cluj Experimentation Vouchers (CEV) enabled cultural actors to trial innovative curriculum modules in real settings. The project explicitly served three vulnerable groups: CCI workers facing structural unemployment; residents of Pata Rât (an informal settlement of approximately 1,500 Roma people) who received companion pilots in sanitation, transport, digitalisation and start-up support; and professionals in IT, banking and outsourcing at risk of automation under Work 4.0 transitions. Six permanent positions were created in the CREIC ecosystem. The project was featured by the European Commission's Inforegio as an example of EU-funded urban innovation in Romania.

Read the full analysis: https://uia.urban-initiative.eu/en/uia-cities/clujnapoca