A dynamic economy with an emphasis on lifelong learning must be underpinned by a dynamic education sector and while tackling early school-leaving is one of the priority objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy addressing the skill deficits and building the key competences of the young unemployed already outside the education system is a key objective of ET 2020. Young Europeans without high-value skill-sets developed as part of an educational progression pathway will become increasingly marginalized and will struggle to realise their full potential in social, personal, employment and economic terms. Countries that fail to address these issues will lose competitiveness. This is not a single-country scenario; it is a pan-European certainty. While second-chance education is a relatively new addition to the educational landscape the compensation measures provided by these programs to many low-skilled young adults are essential to mitigate the individual, social and economic impacts of educational under-achievement wrought by early school-leaving. Building key competences of young Europeans to live and work as responsible, tolerant, respectful and innovative citizens in the digital age is now of profound importance. For many professionals working in formal and in-formal adult education environments developing these key competences is a core part of their daily activity. Working in less structured environments, these professionals can make coherent use of experiential learning, intuitive learning and embedded-learning techniques to stimulate learners and support their development. The versatility and willingness of professionals working in this sector to adopt different formal and informal teaching and learning techniques is central to their continued success. Youth work and adult education are often regarded as the poor relations when it comes to investment in continuous professional development training. Practitioners comprise a diverse rank and file representative of the assortment of environments where youth development training and adult education is delivered. From formal education providers to local community development organisations; from the work place to the family home; from fully qualified professionals to volunteers; the range and diversity of provision permeates all aspects and segments of modern society. If the Europe 2020 Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth is to be successful youth work and adult education will have to play a major role in supporting those on the margins towards greater social inclusion and building key competences for a changing world. While modern training programmes for new emerging education professionals include new teaching and learning techniques the majority of educators in Europe are already in-service. Facilitating the integration of existing education professionals into new learning environments is now imperative. The aim of CRE8IVE is to support innovation in education for youth-at-risk by supporting the CPD of youth workers and adult education staff working in this area. CRE8IVE will encourage youth workers and adult educators to harness the potential of these creative tools to support the re-integration of disadvantaged youth to formal education or employment and their progression as valued members of European society. The new course-ware will support educators to make full use of each of these creative areas and validate the pedagogic veracity of the proposed approach. CRE8IVE responds to the challenge of ensuring that youth with a non-traditional educational history can benefit from innovative pedagogic interventions to acquire the key competences for active citizenship and personal development. The European framework for key competences for lifelong learning has been used in many EU countries as a reference point for reforming national education and training systems. It has contributed to the move towards a more competence-based teaching and learning approach. Additional efforts are needed to support the acquisition of the transversal key competences - digital competence, learning to learn competences, social and civic competences, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, and cultural awareness - and there is an on-going need to update the skills and competences of teachers throughout the education landscape. In addition to the CPD course-ware partners will also provide educators with a tool-kit comprising a range of bespoke embedded-learning and enquiry-based learning curriculum resources to support the acquisition of social and civic competence, digital competence, cultural awareness and expression, literacy, numeracy, entrepreneurship and critical thinking.