The first meeting with partners was held in Ringkøbing (Denmark) within the Culture Up project, aimed at increasing capacities of cultural institutions outside the city centre and in rural areas, and which gathers nine representatives from five different countries.
Within the meeting, partners from Denmark, who are the lead partners, conveyed the examples of good practice regarding the development of cultural content and audience in rural areas, thus offering participants a chance to find out about different local initiatives and projects from 11 until 15 October.
During four days, representatives from Denmark, Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands and Serbia: Provincie Fryslan (the Netherlands), Galway County Council (Ireland), Stichting Keunstwurk (the Netherlands), Sastamala Community College (Finland), Tampere Art Museum (Finland), Kulturskole (Denmark), Ringkøbing Skjern Kommune (Denmark), the ‘Novi Sad – European Capital of Culture’ Foundation and Rumenka Cultural Station, had a chance to exchange knowledge and examples of good practice with their colleagues from other cities by using different experience and perspectives from the artistic, cultural and institutional levels and level of local government. All partners worked on exchange and strategy development, in accordance with the European values.
Since the idea was to enable employees in cultural institutions and centres from these five countries to travel and visit other cultural institutions, all participants participated in workshops of creative leadership, learned about the rural development and methods of bringing art closer to local communities, art initiatives of a community – from an idea to the implementation, connection between music spaces and partners based on the audience development in rural areas, work processes and activating and organising volunteers.
The first meeting with partners was held online a year ago. During the meeting, every representative presented their organisation and their tasks within the project, while after that, several other meetings within which partners discussed the development of a communication strategy of the project, were held. This time, the first station was Denmark, while in the following year, after Novi Sad, the trainings will be held in the Netherlands in June, in Ireland in October and in Finland in November.
One of the five planned meetings will be held in Serbia, in the Rumenka Cultural Station, in May 2022, when Novi Sad will hold the European Capital of Culture title.
The Culture Up project is co-financed by the European Union through Erasmus+ programme.
