On July 18 and 19, the final meeting of the ESSENCE team took place in the form of a Transnational Project Meeting (TPM) in Cologne at the SAE. At this meeting, the project partners summarized and evaluated the results of the EU-funded project, which has been running since November 2021.

The ESSENCE project, which was funded as part of the EU's ERASMUS+ program, aims to improve vocational training in the field of event technology. All results of the project will be published in a freely accessible open source database, as is usual for all EU-funded ERASMUS+ projects. This database is intended to provide event technology training institutions in particular with a guideline for the curriculum - throughout Europe. The aim is to define a comparable level of training at EQF Level 5 (European Qualifications Framework) within Europe so that training courses and professional qualifications are comparable.

In addition to the content-related work, in which the project partners discussed and consolidated the collected data and findings and brought them into a uniform structure, the final administrative issues were also clarified and the extensive documentation required for funding projects was processed.

The meeting was attended by those responsible for the project partners from EHB, EurAka, IGVW, OETHG, STEPP and, of course, VDT as the project lead organization. The presence of these partners underlined the international cooperation and exchange of expertise that characterize the ESSENCE project.

A particular highlight of the TPM was a short tour of the SAE premises, which impressed the participants with its impressive facilities. In addition, the team visited the sound department of Schauspiel Köln in its alternative venue, which also met with great interest and was seen as inspiring - a large number of those present come from the field of theater technology themselves.

Following this last Transnational Project Meeting, the ESSENCE project is now entering its final phase, in which the materials and findings will be made available to the general public. We will be reporting on the details of the content again in the course of the year and look forward to making a major contribution to improving vocational training in the field of event technology with these project results.