Last June 2nd, PELE organized in Porto the second round table, in order to find some answers for the 3rd Intellectual Output of the RESTORE project. The event was titled “Challenges and opportunities in the certification of the professional profile of the STO” and it ended up being a very interesting conversation on the topic.
The panel of speakers was carefully thoughtful through, in order to have an expert representing the different areas – training, employability, certification. Claire Binyon, who is also part of RESTORE advocacy group, is a theatre divisor and teacher at ESMAE (Porto Music and Theatre university) and she shared her experience with recent graduated theatre students increasingly seeking for other options in the field of the community artistic practices. Renata Martins, psychologist, was another guest speaker, representing Centro Social de Soutelo, a social institution with a large experience in hiring arts facilitators as well as creating certified training courses. Isabel Gonçalves, who is an expert trainer and coordinator at IEFP (national institution for professional training and employability) gave precious contributions on how this pilot course could be certified. The conversation was well participated by the audience and it brought interesting thoughts on ways to improve the employability and certification opportunities for these facilitators.