The ‘Novi Sad 2021’ project is a platform for developing creative potentials of Novi Sad. The programme concept of the candidacy of Novi Sad for the title of the European Capital of Culture 2021 entitled ‘4 New Bridges’ is based on four ‘Novi Sad bridges’, where each of them is focused on some of the areas that will be developed.

One of the four programme bridges is the Freedom Bridge. Its topics are creative industries and young people as recognisable resources of the city of Novi Sad. The idea is to strengthen creative industries and youth sector, and thus strengthen Novi Sad in order to create chances for the city keep its creative young people, as well as to become a place that will attract many creative young people from the region, Europe and the world. One of the ways to realise this project is to increase the number of start-up enterprises and incubators in the field of creative industries and to increase the number of employees in creative industries.

Novi Sad boasts with the fact that it currently employs around 3,500 young people in the IT sector, and that it is an unofficial capital of the IT sector in Serbia. It can be said with great certainty that the IT sector is the most productive sector of the Serbian economy due to the fact that there are almost 10,000 vacant posts for IT experts, and due to the constant growth of software export, which is now measured in hundreds of millions of euros annually.

The Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, which educates future IT experts, currently does not have the capacities to accept more students, although the interest among freshman students for IT courses is high and the Faculty has enough professors.

The solution for this problem is on the horizon. Namely, during the last meeting of the representatives of the University of Novi Sad, republic, provincial and city authorities, an initiative has been launched to expand the capacities of the University of Novi Sad through the construction of the second phase of the Technological Park and creation of a new University campus in the ‘Archibald Reiss’ barracks.

The construction of the second phase of the Technological Park is the perspective for development of the University in Novi Sad in next couple of decades, because it will contribute to the development of start-up companies that are connected with the University, which will contribute to the technological development of the University itself, as well as of Novi Sad and Serbia.

The initiative for the University of Novi Sad to take over the complex of the former ‘Archibald Reiss’ barracks has been launched. This would enable a new campus to be formed. As it was announced, Department for the IT Sector of the Faculty of Technical Sciences, Centre for Strategy and Advanced Studies, Academy of Arts and part of the Faculty of Medicine would be located there. It is also important to state that in this way the ‘Archibald Reiss’ barracks, which have not been used for a long time and are one of the most representative objects near the centre of Novi Sad, would be reconstructed and able to display their former glory.