Category Archives: News from organisations
Articles and information coming from official organizations.
Mobility fund for global networking of creative entrepreneurs
Within the framework of Creative Tracks, the Roberto Cimetta Fund is launching an open call for travel grants from 7th March to 7th April 2017. Individual cultural entrepreneurs living and working in the Euro-MENA geographical zone can apply for travel grants to destinations all over the world. Priority is given to cultural entrepreneurs living and working in the MENA region or the Arab and Middle Eastern diasporas. Travel must take place before 17th December 2017.
If you want to apply, please visit the Roberto Cimetta Fund’s website and fill in the contact form on the fund’s website. The office of the Fund will send you the link to the appropriate form to fill in online. The results will be announced on 7th June 2017.
Deadline for receiving applications: 07/04/2017.
Cultural Accelerator Learning Space in Cape Town
The African Arts Institute based in Cape Town, South Africa has launched in 2015 a program called Cultural Accelerator which engages 17 arts entrepreneurs from 10 different communities within the greater Cape Town community. As part of the program, they have created the “Learning Space” concept as “a space for peer reflection, collaborative learning and to enhance the impact of the programme specifically in terms of local community-building.
The Cultural Accelerator Learning Space is a bi-monthly feedback session on the development and progress of each entrepreneur in terms of their business and personal goals. Here each person is reviewed by their peers, and are given critical feedback on their progress and future plans for their business and cultural initiatives.
While checking their website, I didn’t find any recent activities, so I am not sure if the program goes on or has concluded a couple of cycles.
How folk art can turn people into cultural entrepreneurs
I was reading a Fortune.com article published some months ago on folk art (an expression of the world’s traditional cultures according to the International Folk Art Alliance) and how it empowers people to empower other people and communities in financially poor environments.
Polish folk art from https://joannaszymczak.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/polish-folk-art/
As women and their children are very often the victims of poverty and violence, the reading gave me the impression that a growing folk art market can be a kind of social catalyst for taking people out of their difficult situations. Even more, it is enabling them to multiply this effect by sharing know-how and access to knowledge. The reason for doing so is that is turns those creators into entrepreneurs who scale and impact their local communities.
One of the most interesting parts of the article read as follows:
“Folk art, which has helped to deliver daily life improvements even in the most remote regions of the earth, offer many lessons that can ultimately yield wider spread gains, contends Manuel Montoya, an economist at the University of New Mexico. Montoya has grown impatient with the constant handwringing over globalism’s impact on local economies. He sees a reverse connection: village economies can offer a nutritious feed to an economy that is dominated by mass production. Increasingly, the globalized economy hungers for the unique and locally made.”
For more info here is a link to the article.
