On Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th November, the second Training Hotspot has gone live from Novi Sad (Serbia) on Zoom, gathering TRAINART’s partners and beneficiaries for the two-day event organized by the Serbian partner Kulturanova.

This time, the focus was on broadening the Cultural and Creative Industries’ horizons by sharing knowledge on innovative tools to do business in the performing arts sector. You can check out the background paper for more information on Kulturanova, the event and the speakers.

The speakers

To bring this knowledge to the table, 4 speakers were invited to share their own expertise on different business models, applicable in both the management of cultural places and in artistic interventions in non-conventional places.

  • Milan Vracar is an independent cultural producer and the president of Kulturanova. He gained vast experience in international projects thanks to the collaboration with some of the most important cultural actors in Serbia, Europe and overseas. He has also collaborated in many projects on residencies and other informal educational activities.
  • Uroš Mladenović is Kulturanova‘s Artistic director and the coordinator of the Teatarnova programme. He is also an actor and a youth worker, founder of the Teleport Theater, which deals with youth artistic education, and does plays for young people in various cities in Serbia.
  • Gabriella Antezza is Materahub‘s Training and Project Manager. She is responsible for the development and delivery of training needs analysis, contents and outputs, learning assessment tools and resources. She has also a wide experience in the application of the Creative Project Canvas, a strategic framework to help artists and creatives planning sustainable projects and to support them detail the practical and philosophical aspects of their creative projects, reflect on its economical sustainability and on its impacts in a short, medium and long term.
  • Marija Farmer is a psychologist, physical theatre director, poetry writer and international consultant for various programs for people and organizational development using theatre and creative expression. Owner of Magic Agency, a consultancy company, and author of the brand Business Theatre, a methodology that combines innovative business thinking with live theatre.

The event

As already mentioned, the two days focused on sharing knowledge on innovative tools to do business in the performing arts sector.

On the first day, the two experts from Kulturanova, Milan and Uroš, presented their performing arts experience as following:

  • Milan Vracar introduced his professional expertise around Serbia and the various projects of Kulturanova. His presentation focused on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Purpose and Creativity. He demonstrated how the famous Elitist View, according to which creativity is a rare talent that cannot be taught, is not the reality. The Developmental View is far more accurate: creativity is a problem solving process that can be learned, practiced and succesfully applied by everyone. It is a synthesis of experiences and knowledge. But how do we bring our creative ideas to life? Milan showed a process where Creativity leads to Innovation, Innovation creates new opportunities and, eventually, new opportunities spark Entrepreneurship. He concluded that Entrepreneurship in Cultural Creative Industries is often overlooked or lacks support. That is why it is crucial to show the field’s best practices to possible cultural and creative entrepreneurs, to support and motivate their future actions.
  • Uroš Mladenović helped the participants working out creative ideas with the help of Jamboard, a Google tool designed for online collaboration shared via a common link, and the Zoom breakout groups, where we could recreate a group brainstorming session with the beneficiaries. Afterwards, he presented his work with artistic interventions in youth centres. He discussed that it is fundamental to look for the core problem of an organization and target it in creative ways.

On the second day, two guest speakers took the word and added their own experience with the application of new and strategic business models, both in the management of Cultural and Creative Industries and in artistic interventions in non-conventional places.

  • Gabriella Antezza explained how to apply the strategic tool Creative Project Canvas in Cultural and Creative Industries, taking her experience at Materahub as an example and showing how to apply it during the very first creational phases of a new project.
  • Marija Farmer presented her business Magic Agency, which creates ad-hoc interventions in businesses for different purposes. To explain it better, she involved the participants in some of the activities she usually undertakes with the companies during her sessions. These activities are usually meant to stimulate collaboration among employees, create a good working environment via bonding activities, enhance marketing and promotional activities and much more.

 

Besides the very presentations, the brilliancy of this second Training Hotspot lied in the interactions between the participants and the speakers. In fact, New Business Models for Performing Arts resulted in a lively, inspiring and insightful event, thanks to the interactive activities newly adopted by Kulturanova and its guests.

All the interventions and presentations are available on Spreaker! Listen to the podcasts here.

After this active event, we are looking forward to the next TrainArt Training Hotspot, this time live from Ancona, Italy, organized by Consorzio Marche Spettacolo.