Advocacy through DigiCreate
Young Creatives and the Digital Ecosystem
Policy & Digital Rights: What Young People Need to Know – Advocacy through DigiCreate
When young people create, share, and collaborate online, they are doing much more than producing content. They are exercising digital rights, navigating policy frameworks, managing personal data, negotiating authorship, and participating in cultural and civic life.
Yet, DigiCreate’s research indicates that many young creatives are only partially aware of the systems that shape their digital participation. Policy and digital rights often feel distant, technical, or inaccessible, even though they directly affect working conditions, visibility, income opportunities, freedom of expression, and long-term sustainability in the cultural and creative industries (CCI).
From Regulation to Empowerment
DigiCreate approaches this gap as an educational challenge rather than an institutional failure. Understanding policy and digital rights is about enabling young people to create, collaborate, and advocate safely, ethically, and confidently in digital environments.
Research Grounded in Ethics and Participation
To better understand these realities, DigiCreate conducted research across six European and Western Balkan countries, engaging young people and youth workers active in cultural and creative fields. All research activities followed Erasmus+ ethical principles and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Participants were fully informed about the objectives of the study, their rights, and the voluntary nature of their participation. Written informed consent was obtained before data collection, personal data were anonymized, and qualitative insights were reported in aggregated or pseudonymized form. These safeguards were not only procedural requirements but also an integral part of DigiCreate’s commitment to ethical, transparent, and inclusive knowledge production, a principle that directly connects to the project’s focus on digital rights.
(Learn more: GDPR – Your rights in the EU)
DigiCreate’s Findings: Digital Creativity as Advocacy
The findings reveal that young creatives are already deeply engaged in forms of advocacy, even when they do not describe their work in policy terms. Across all countries, participants reported using digital creativity to express personal and cultural identity, promote diversity, raise awareness about social and environmental issues, support well-being, and address human rights concerns. Digital platforms function as civic spaces where young people participate in public discourse, challenge dominant narratives, and build communities, often without formal recognition or institutional support.
Structural Barriers and Unequal Access
However, the research also highlights structural challenges. Across Europe and the Western Balkans, cultural and creative sectors are governed by complex and fragmented policy landscapes. While many national and EU-level strategies aim to support digital innovation, youth participation, and creative entrepreneurship, young people often experience these frameworks as short-term, unevenly accessible, or poorly communicated. As a result, many learn how to navigate funding schemes, copyright rules, platform algorithms, and data protection requirements informally through peer exchange, experimentation, and trial and error.
(Related context: EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027)
Regional Realities: Different Contexts, Shared Challenges
Regional differences further shape these experiences. In countries such as Germany and Spain, more established policy frameworks for digital education, cultural funding, and creative labor offer relatively stable support structures, although young people still report limited influence over decision-making processes.
In Portugal, innovation and cultural diversity play a strong role, yet access to long-term opportunities remains a concern.
In Montenegro and the Western Balkans, fragmented governance, limited public investment, and infrastructural gaps mean that young creatives often rely on free or open-source digital tools and self-organized networks to sustain their work. This resourcefulness demonstrates creativity beyond content production; it reflects adaptive strategies developed in response to systemic constraints.
Digital Rights
Digital rights emerge as a cross-cutting issue in all contexts. Questions of authorship, fair remuneration, data protection, accessibility, and the ethical use of emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, are increasingly central to creative work. DigiCreate’s research shows that young people are aware of these issues but frequently lack structured learning opportunities to explore them critically and safely. Without clear guidance, digital participation can feel risky, especially for those navigating precarity, marginalization, or non-traditional career paths in the CCI sector.
(Related: EU approach to Artificial Intelligence)
How Young People Want to Learn
Importantly, the research also sheds light on how young people are keen to learn about these topics. Traditional, theory-heavy formats are perceived as less effective. Instead, respondents consistently express a preference for short, hands-on workshops, mentoring, collaborative projects, and peer learning. They value educational approaches that combine digital skills with soft skills such as communication, creativity, adaptability, teamwork, and critical thinking. Learning about policy and rights becomes meaningful when it is directly connected to creative practice and real-life challenges.
Advocacy Through DigiCreate
This is where advocacy through DigiCreate becomes tangible. The project does not frame advocacy as a separate or elite activity reserved for institutions or experts. Instead, it recognizes advocacy as something young people already practice through creative expression, digital participation, and community engagement. By strengthening policy literacy and awareness of digital rights, DigiCreate helps transform creativity from individual expression into informed collective influence.
The Online Creative Hive: Where Practice Meets Policy
The DigiCreate Online Creative Hive Open Digital Toolbox is designed as an educational and participatory space where these dimensions intersect. Grounded in ethically conducted research, the platform aims to translate complex policy and rights-related issues into accessible, practice-oriented learning resources. Rather than offering abstract explanations, it supports young creatives in understanding how their work relates to funding structures, cultural strategies, digital regulation, data protection, and civic participation, and how they can engage with these systems responsibly and effectively.
Empowering Young People to Shape the System
In a digital landscape that is fast-changing, transnational, and deeply interconnected, young people need more than technical skills or inspiration. They need access, rights, recognition, and the knowledge to navigate the frameworks that shape their creative lives.
DigiCreate does not advocate on behalf of young creatives; it equips them to advocate for themselves. Because when young people understand the rules, rights, and responsibilities of digital creation, they are not only better prepared to participate; they are better positioned to reshape the systems they are already part of.
Funding Agency: EACEA – European Education and Culture Executive Agency
