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Organisations entered CYANOTYPES through different doors. Discover how pilots tested and adopted the Framework and allowed businesses, higher education institutions and cultural organisations to address their own ambitions, respond to local challenges, and uncover new opportunities.
The article, The Questions Behind the CYANOTYPES Pilots, explored the common tensions that led organisations to experiment with CYANOTYPES. Educators, cultural organisations, regional ecosystems, and creative businesses around the world were responding to digital transformation, environmental change, new forms of work, changing communities, and evolving professional identities.
Evidently, the challenges were fairly similar but their ambitions were not. If organisations were responding to different priorities, why did they all choose CYANOTYPES? What opportunities did they see? And what made the framework feel like the right vehicle for exploring their own questions?
The organisations participating in the CYANOTYPES Pilots were navigating within different sectors, institutions, and local contexts. Some were rethinking higher education and strengthening regional ecosystems, while others were exploring entrepreneurship, supporting work-based learning, introducing micro-credentials, and building organisational capacity.
While they shared common tensions, each organisation found its own point of entry. The CYANOTYPES Framework became a way to rethink learning, and for some, it offered a language for organisational change, ecosystem collaboration, or strategic planning.
In many ways, organisations were adopting CYANOTYPES to make the Framework their own. This diversity of entry points reveals one of the framework’s defining characteristics in how it provides a structure that connects different ambitions, contexts, and priorities through a shared understanding of future-oriented competences.
A point of inquiry for many participating higher education institutions was on how learning itself should evolve. At the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the pilot explored place-based and experiential learning, recognising municipalities, communities, and cultural organisations as co-creators of knowledge alongside students. At the University of Applied Arts Vienna (UAAV), pilots ranged from examining how micro-credentials could support more flexible learning pathways by building institutional readiness before implementation to doctoral development and work-based learning. At the School of Design of the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature in Mexico City they used the framework to inform curriculum development and explore new approaches to creative learning.
“The Framework is highly adaptable and does not require a complete organisational redesign. Even a relatively small pilot can generate valuable insights, build a shared language around future skills and uncover opportunities that might otherwise remain invisible…. One of the most important insights from this pilot [Exploring the Creative Agency Circle in Doctoral Development] was that doctoral development extends far beyond research expertise.”
– Angelika Zelisko, Coordinator of CYANOTYPES at the University of Applied Arts Vienna
These pilots demonstrate how education has become a way of questioning where learning happens, who contributes to it, and how future competences can be recognised.
Other organisations used the CYANOTYPES Framework to map and strengthen their ecosystems. Networks working across culture, tourism, entrepreneurship, regional development, and sustainability were looking for stronger partnerships, more meaningful collaboration, and new ways of connecting organisations that rarely work together. Gradually, the question shifted from who is missing to what skills are missing.
Some participants adopted CYANOTYPES as an organisational development framework. The Stuttgart Region Economic Development Corporation (WRS), for example, recognised that intermediaries could play an important role in strengthening lifelong learning by connecting organisations that already possess complementary expertise. Instead of creating new educational programmes themselves, they focused on building partnerships that could extend existing learning ecosystems. Similarly, UAAV discovered that introducing micro-credentials was not simply an educational innovation. It required organisational alignment, internal dialogue, and new relationships across the institution.
“Until now, we largely left the task of skills and competences to educational providers… Through the pilot programme [Internal Skills Strategy Assessment], we came to realise internally just how much potential lies in competence development.”
– Niclas Ciziroglou, Stuttgart Region Economic Development Corporation (WRS)
“Some of the most valuable outcomes come from testing assumptions, refining tools and learning about organisational realities.”
– Angelika Zelisko, Coordinator of CYANOTYPES at the University of Applied Arts Vienna
Looking across the pilots, there is no single correct way to approach CYANOTYPES. Whether they focus on education, ecosystem partnerships or intuitional strategy, their entry points differed because their realities were different. Each pilot shows that the Framework can adapt to local ambitions while contributing to a broader conversation about how creative professionals, organisations, and ecosystems prepare for an increasingly uncertain future.
As a continuation, the article Lessons Learned Along the Way explores what happened once organisations started experimenting with the Framework, the unexpected lessons, shifts in thinking, and discoveries that emerged along the way.
This series is based on qualitative interviews conducted between June and August 2026 with organisations participating in the CYANOTYPES Pilots. The articles identify recurring themes, tensions, opportunities and lessons that emerged across pilots operating in different educational, organisational and regional contexts. Quotations are reproduced with permission and are attributed to the respective pilot organisations. Explore the CYANOTYPES Pilot Showcase and learn about each pilot’s idea that runs across diverse disciplines and sectors.
The Pilot Story
Read below a series of articles bringing together different pilot experiences on the motivations behind the work, the ways CYANOTYPES was applied, and patterns that emerged.