Throughout the first phase of the project, EDTI has been in close contact with the Cumulus network. Cumulus is a global association to serve art and design education and research. It is a forum for partnership and transfer of knowledge and best practices. Cumulus consists currently of 169 members from 43 countries.

Cumulus has initiated working groups that are a member initiative activity. These working groups address various themes such as Sustainability, Digital Culture, Research, Benchmarking, Staff Development, Virtual University, Glass Art and Design, Fashion and Textile, Industrial design, Interior design…

As a project of interest to educational institutions, EDTI has been one of them. Working groups can be permanent or one time groups and they meet mainly during the conferences, for example once a year. These working groups currently face difficulties to communicate and develop. EDTI has offered to support them.

Building on the pre-established platform, EDTI will offer its Forum facilities to the working groups by creating dedicated discussion groups and resource areas that will foster a permanent flow of communication. This collaboration will be up and running by the end of August.

About the European Design Training Incubator

The ‘European Design Training Incubator’ (EDTI) has started as an EU network project within the Leonardo da Vinci programme. EDTI covers the whole range of learning focused on professional practice in design.

By benchmarking design education and training in the context of the lifelong learning, the core idea behind EDTI is to develop an international network and platform through which design-related organisations can audit existing training provision, identify needs and share and coordinate training development and its implementation.

Under the coordination of ‘design innovation’, the 6 founding partners were chosen because of their specific expertise in the field, they are ‘design innovation’, (Belgium), designkunst (Germany), Business Support Center for SMEs – Ruse (Bulgaria), Cirtes (France), Estonian Design Centre (Estonia), Gray’s School of Art, the Robert Gordon University (United Kingdom).

The vision of EDTI is to support the creative industries through design training and education.

For joining EDTI Network, go to http://www.edti.eu in the ‘About EDTI’ area.

About Cumulus

Cumulus has been a pioneer in developing jointly organised MA-programmes, intensive workshops, projects and biannual conferences. It has published 'working papers' which have documented the discussions and seminars in conferences, a First Aid Kit to help students and professors in planning mobility actions, kept up a web page, etc. These activities go on.

During the past twenty years Cumulus has grown in size and ambition. The number of members has grown from 6 to 169 (2010). The members represent most of the European countries and during past years several countries overseas have also joined Cumulus. Member universities represent now 43 different countries. The aim is to build and keep on going a dynamic and flexible academic forum that would bring together top level educational institutions from all parts of the world.

More information: http://www.cumulusassociation.org