Project IDOLS*

In project IDOLS*, creative and cultural parties worked together with clients on complex societal challenges. By looking at the issues through design glasses, not only new directions for solutions were found, but clients also got to know and appreciate the knowledge, expertise and strength of the sector better. At the same time, creative parties learned new skills with regard to working on hyper-complex challenges and collaboration in complex settings.

Pre-corona, when IDOLS* was developed, the labour market position of the cultural and creative sector was already far from ideal: temporary contracts, minimal hourly rates or even unpaid work and a lack of social risk coverage. During COVID-19, however, it became clearer than ever that society really needs the sector. Vision, connection and intelligent design are requirements to arrive at meaningful, scalable solution directions that are widely supported and have impact. But in order to have access to these, skills and knowledge are needed on both the client side and the contractor side.

Learning experiences
IDOLS (2019-2020) was developed as a programme to effectively connect societal challenges and its problem owners with the creative and cultural industries. Ten projects were running within IDOLS, each with a complex multi-stakeholder issue, a consortium of problem owners (clients; both government and private parties), a consortium of contracting parties (cultural and creative sector) and a coach. This coach coached the problem owners in their commissioning, while a consortium of contractors worked on the challenge.

In doing so, IDOLS* worked on several points:
a) The lack of knowledge, experience and confidence of clients in collaborating with the creative and cultural sectors;
b) Developing skills by and for the creative and cultural sectors to work on hyper-complex challenges in complex settings;
c) Helping find solutions for these hyper-complex societal challenges;

By sharing learnings from all sides during and after the programme, IDOLS* accelerated and strengthened the learning process of both contractors and clients who participated in the projects, as well as beyond.

Research and impact
Parallel research by TU Delft into this programme has shown that this IDOLS method of working on societal challenges has a real impact on the social innovation required for these major challenges. At the same time, improvements are also conceivable for a next edition or a similar programme. These are described in the IDOLS* research report.

The projects
The ten projects each had their own challenge, their own consortium of clients, a coach and their own consortium of contractors. As a result, they all differed from each other in terms of output; both with regard to collaboration within the project and the outcome of the project. In total, about 80 parties participated within IDOLS*.

The parties worked together on, among other things, the future of informal social care and awareness of it in the Netherlands, preventing the sexual exploitation of minors and making nature-inclusive the new normal in construction. A project about the prevention of debt among young people won a Dutch Design Award, and the project ‘Everyone takes part’, which was about the inclusion of people with disabilities in society, even won the Gehandicaptenzorgprijs 2021. Several projects were continued after IDOLS*; as a business case or in an adapted form.

The IDOLS* website with all the stories can be found here..

You can find the research report in digital form here.

IDOLS was a programme of the Federatie Creatieve Industrie and was made possible by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. The research into the impact of IDOLS was made possible by CLICKNL.