business culture partnership (bcp)

THIS PROGRAM IS PART FINANCED BY THE SOUTH BALTIC PROGRAM AND THE EUROPEAN UNION.

www.business‐culture‐partnership.eu

BUSINESS CULTURE PARTNERSHIP (BCP)

BEST PRACTICE BOOK

PROJECT: BCP

PROGRAM: SOUTH BALTIC PROGRAM

MADE BY: BCP PARTNER CONSORTIUM

DATE: AUGUST 2014

2BUSINESS CULTURE PARTNERSHIP (BCP)

Seminar and Round table discussion for entrepreneurs

The Round Table discussion‐seminar implemented in Rietavas for the first time on 17.12.2013 at the RVIC (Rietavas Business Information Centre) involved 44 participants, mostly entrepreneurs from Rietavas municipality. It was arranged with the aim to promote the cooperation between business and culture sectors and guided by a task once formulated by Vytas Rutkauskas, Director of Rietavas Oginski Culture History Museum: „How to connect entrepreneurial and cultural spaces so that Rietavas become a centre of innovations”.

With this in mind, the seminar intended to bring together entrepreneurs and cultural players from Rietavas so that they get the opportunity to share their undertakings and initiatives for the first time and can get a better, more holistic picture of Rietavas development trends. On this basis, they, again, got the chance to jointly add own ideas to this and, thus, provide valuable input to the local BCP development.

During the seminar, Laima Dockevičienė introduced landscape design programme students from the Zemaitija College, who are skilled to decorate interiors and exteriors of offices, so that companies can practically use this resource and both have mutual benefits.

The mayor of Rietavas, who also attended the event, was impressed by the active contributions to the event over the entire seminar duration. The participants addressed the issue of the population decline in the municipality, but also indicated that Rietavas is one of the youngest municipalities in Lithuania, which is also illustrated by large number of children – 140 ‐ attending the Rietavas M.K.Oginski Art School.


Inspired by the seminar, various Rietavas organisations recognised that they should put more efforts on stimulating the cultural development of Rietavas to make it even more attractive to tourists and to motivate young people to stay and be creative for the benefit of the region. First initiatives have already been started since then, for instance by the furniture company “Reval baldai”, Rietavas Museum, various local craftsmen and farmers, the local action group “Rietavo Iniciatyvos” and other organisations – they are on the way to implementing various creative projects by now.

Summarizing we can conclude: Round Table meetings of that kind bring together initiatives and increase the understanding for each other and the exploitation of synergies within the community.


Media campaign: „kulturUnternehmen“ (“EnterprisingCulture”) in Greifswald

After months of preparatory BCP work, some local partners involved in the project demanded more practical examples for business‐culture‐partnerships in Greifswald which was the starting point to ‘collect’ and present stories and faces: Committed ‘heads’ of culture‐friendly business players who already support Greifswald’s cultural scene. A main intention was to make their motivation visible and to encourage potential imitators.

The campaign was implemented as a monthly column in the local magazine “Vorpommern Magazin” which is closely related to the regional trade association. The magazine is disseminated in the City of Greifswald and the surrounding region. One important message in the articles published there was to point out that culture in Greifswald has an important impact on the attractiveness of our city as a business location. It became apparent that especially persons who are personally interested in culture act as supporters here – so that the approach followed here is to raise the interest of more business representatives in the local cultural life.

The feedback we have received on the series of articles was very positive – the presentations were considered as fresh, uncommon and very motivating.

Five of the articles on culture commitments of local entrepreneurs in Greifwald


BCP Workshop in Rietavas

The BCP work implemented over the first project months made clear that small‐scale producers, creators and craftsmen, though being skilled and still aware of traditions, are weak players in Rietavas' economic, social and cultural life. Cooperation rarely occurs and, if it happens, it is fragmental and occasional.

Based on this understanding, the project team decided that cultural players and small‐scale producers of local products should be invited to joint workshops and work together on developing a brand name, representing local products and services and reflecting Rietavas identity. As a result, local producers should use the brand name to label their products and services and, at the same time, represent and promote the region. In addition, the joint working process will establish new partnerships and shall encourage future networking.

On 20 June 2014, the first workshop took place in a small village named Lioliai. The place was chosen in order to get closer to local producers. Before the workshop started, the village was asked to present its strength. It turned out that people and especially women in the village are still very much involved in manufacturing traditional products – with focus on traditional Samogitian food.

Producers and cultural players from five different villages of the region participated in the workshop which took place in a nice, even cosy atmosphere: a beautiful table with the traditional food stimulated discussions about what is important for local producers and for cultural players. What would they like to cherish and to promote in their area?

Later, the workshop was visited by a group of Swedish people who came to Rietavas for holiday. They were invited to join in and to taste nice food and feel the atmosphere and to give their feedback so that an outer perception was included into the working process.

During the workshop, both local producers and cultural players identified the unique nature, attention to traditional crafts and culinary heritage as key elements to be included into the communication. The visitors added that they loved the hospitality and openness of the rural people and the beautiful nature.


A designer participating in the workshop collected the main feedbacks and ideas and used this as a basis for sketching a brand name for Rietavas’ local producers.

Soon after the event, first drafts of the brand logo were sent to local producers and cultural players who will give their feedback during the second workshop.

Samogitian traditional table with homemade products was a special treat to participants of the workshop and made them feel comfortable and open.

Bee hives – working in pairs and small groups and discussing what is important in the community


‚kulturLokal’ – business meets culture and vice versa

Almost 70 culture, business and municipality representatives from Greifswald followed the invitation to the first BCP‐exchange event in Greifswald which took place on 28 February 2014, in the socio‐cultural centre Sankt Spiritus in Greifswald. On this event, 20 cultural groups and institutions presented their diversity to more than 20 interested enterprises, economic institutions and municipality representatives. The aim was to initiate first contacts and deepen existing relations between the two sectors.

Both sides were invited to exchange about theirs needs and offers and, thus, to identify possibilities of cooperation. Live music, culinary delights and an attractive tombola rounded off the open and ‘culture friendly’ atmosphere. As face‐to‐face‐contact need careful preparation in consideration of the different ‘languages’ and expectations of cultural and business players, workshops and preparatory meetings with cultural protagonists were held in November 2013 and January 2014. Here, it occurred to be very helpful for all participants to have an overview about the activities and ‘products’ of the participants event prior to the start of the event itself.

Contact‐making on the KulturLokal in February 2014


The event itself was a full success, a lot of positive feedbacks were given and many participants requested for a continuation. In addition, the feedbacks helped a lot to optimize the event structure in view of coming “kulturLokal”‐events (length of the event, arrangements etc.). In addition, we heard about first meetings between participants based on the contacts established at the “kulturLokal”. Another important although quiet unexpected result was the intensified network between cultural protagonists who exchanged possibilities for exhibitions, presentations and similar activities.


Exchange between entrepreneurs and a cultural association on the first KulturLokal

In summary, it can be said that this BCP measure helps to overcome barriers of getting in contact for both sides ‐ the cultural and the business sector. The cultural organizations and players can gain additional resources, extend contacts to companies, create PR for their projects, learn from companies and enlarge their networks. The involved companies get the chance to create a new form of PR, establish contacts with their cultural environment, enlarge their own network, test their competences in other fields and maybe find new clients.


Rietavas Festival

Rietavas artists, craftsmen, representatives of the recreation business and creators frequently start new initiatives, ideas, undertakings that often remain invisible or are noticed only within a small network. They lack cohesion, communication and representation skills. Entrepreneurs, on the other side, tend to support always the same cultural initiatives. In some cases, such support does not contribute effectively to the general cultural development of the area. Based on this understanding, the Rietavas Festival was established with the aim of stimulating creators to develop and present their undertakings to the community and increase their visibility to a broader public.

During the preparation stage, a call for ideas was launched. Based on this, different creators applied to become a part of Rietavas Festival, among them artists, who organise plain air weeks, rural communities who organize own village events, a young mothers association with the event “Beauty Day for Mum”, students who wish to organize a youth camp including horse riding and art lessons and many others.

Birute Fiodorova is teaching young riders painting in a summer camp, which is part of the Rietavas Festival.


Based on all these ideas and contributions, the Rietavas Festival will take place in Rietavas municipality every year from now on – both in the conventional spaces, i.e. where events usually take place, and in new venues which are, thus, newly introduced to the visitors. The festival will make a significant contribution to increasing Rietavas' attractiveness both to the local community and visitors.

In addition to this overall effect it turned out that the involved creators of small events start cooperating more closely in the context of such a festival. They recognize that it is more fun when they work together and that, due to this larger dimension, the involved events become richer and more interesting for the community.


Cultural Guide for Companies in the Rostock Region

As the BCP project indicated clearly that many entrepreneurs and business representatives in Rostock are only familiar with only few cultural offers in the city (mainly the large institutions, hardly freelance artists or small cultural institutions), the idea was developed to create a cultural guide especially for entrepreneurs and companies. The innovative element, i.e. what makes this guide different from existing similar publications, is that it was no pure presentation of institutions but a compilation of formats that are of particular interest to the companies: as side‐program for annual business events or company Christmas parties, as destination of a cultural evening with the team or similar.

Based on this approach, local cultural protagonists were asked to develop and respectively describe such formats in a short and inspiring way. Based on all these inputs, a card game comprising of 32 cards, i.e. different offers, was designed and distributed in a card game box. The special format attracted much more interest than a brochure and makes it easy to edit updates which will be done in regular intervals from now on: here, only some extra cards have to be printed or invalid cards can be removed. The feedback from the companies but also from the cultural protagonists was a very positive one: they liked the fresh approach and the very short but inspiring presentation – and the involved cultural institutions reported a significantly higher interest in their offers after the publication of this cultural guide.

First Cultural Guide for Companies developed by the BCP team Rostock


BCP Event in Rostock: Launching of the cultural guide

Related to the aforementioned Cultural Guide for Companies, a new event format was established: Artists and culture institutions presented in this guide will jointly arrange an event where the companies get the chance to meet them personally, get a direct impression how the presented offers look (or feel) like and the chance to arrange a cooperation directly – based on a personal meeting in a relaxed, inspiring and comfortable atmosphere. The pilot event was arranged at the Kunsthalle in Rostock, a place famous for interesting local cultural events and good local and regional networking. In this location, a program was arranged where 14 institutions from the region actively contributed to – with own presentations (ranging from Jazz music and belly dancing to modern poetry reading), stands were the entrepreneurs can test ideas like contributing to a radio broadcast, painting with wine or experiencing a fire show.

Regarding the preparation and promotion of the event, the organizing team got support from several entrepreneurial and business networks as well as from many cultural players and representatives – excellent preconditions for establishing lasting BCP collaborations.

Dissemination of invitations to the launching event on a major networking event in Rostock


XING Event in Bentwisch on 08 October 2014

One of the monthly meeting of entrepreneurs in the federal state of Mecklenburg‐Vorpommern (Germany) associated to the social business network XING was used to present the project BCP but mainly business‐culture cooperation ideas – which was done in a very lively and quite uncommon way: With a fake introduction of a new entrepreneur who claimed to be a new resident of the technology centre ITC which hosted the event.

Here, the artist Sven Lange introduced himself as a company with the name “The strong Legs” and a business idea that aims to support short entrepreneurs with prolonging their legs with high‐tech stilts that enable them to communicate on eye‐level. This would allow them to reach a better position in negotiations and to keep a better overview in their companies.

It was very nice to see how many people, about 40 entrepreneurs, not aware that this was no real company presentation, showed irritated, amused or even funny reactions during this presentation, which took about 5 minutes. Afterwards, the “entrepreneur” announced to come back later for presenting his product. While the guests got first snacks and drinks, the artist was changing for the second part of his performance: He returned on very long stilts in a way that made clear that this is comedy acting.

Afterwards there was little need to explain how culture can enrich business events and the interest in recommendations for cultural offers and the inquiries about business‐culture collaborations were impressive. Persons who visited the event stated that they particularly liked the way of presenting projects and this new approach.


The artist Sven Lange presenting his “company” on the Xing event in Bentwisch


BCP Awards in Rostock, Rietavas and Szczecin

Within the context of the BCP project, three project partners jointly developed and specified the idea of honoring companies that are particularly active regarding the support of cultural initiatives, events or projects. Resulting from this, three specific awards were developed: The award “Kulturpate der Hansestadt Rostock” and the BCP awards in Szczecin and Rietavas. They all were awarded for the first time in 2014.

The main idea behind the awards was to make the companies' commitment visible, to keep them interested in and involved into cultural life – and to attract other companies that got inspired by these positive examples. The prices are not related to money but are a certificate and a trophy to presented in the own business premises: art objects that are beautiful and a value out of itself.

Two of the trophies were developed out of a small artist contest where 5 artists contributed to – the two winners were nominated by a jury comprising of art experts and business and culture representatives. The company to be honored with the BCP award is nominated by a jury of business and culture representatives on the basis of proposals submitted in the context of a call.

The awarding that will take place in half‐year, annual or two‐year intervals now (different from place to place) goes along with PR work related to the idea of business supporting culture – thus, even strengthening the effect of the award.

In Szczecin, the award constitutes a part of bigger events organized by the Northern Chamber of Commerce, which will take place every half year.


Rostock’s Mayor, Roland Methling, on the awarding ceremony of the “Kulturpate der Hansestadt Rostock” in July 2014

The award for Rietavas created by the Rostockean artist Janet Zeugner


“Business format art” in Szczecin

The term “Business format art” established by the Northern Chamber of Commerce stands for a series of activities started in October 2013 aiming to organize regular exhibition in business places and to bring business and culture together in this context. The work on this format started with the NCC preparing the surrounding and infrastructure to enable the involved artists to bring their works to the business world – in this case the headquarters of Northern Chamber of Commerce. In 2013, three exhibitions in total took place and the interest was very high: All the visitors of the Northern Chamber of Commerce came, via this approach, in contact with culture and, thus, were confronted with the idea of culture being an enrichment to the own life – and culture being something that is worth being supported. This was also a starting point to arise interest among the business people to organize similar events in their companies.

The feedback from the side of the visitors was positive and many business representatives who have had a chance to visit the exhibitions expressed their support of the idea. Resulting from this, it was decided to involve more stakeholders into the future events.

The first exibition in the hall of the Northern Chamber of Commerce.


Website “Business and Art”

The main tool of this BCP format will be a website, which intends to make companies aware of the events they can support. For this purpose, the website, established as a sub‐page of the project partners website, will inform about coming events with detailed information also on the performing institution/artist.

The development of this website was arranged in a way that the addressed target group itself was involved into the portal development. The result of related consultations is a portal structure that comprises of a news section (that consist of not only the event part news in Szczecin, but also the project news) and a teaching section (articles about the topic of business and culture cooperation and the project itself presenting recommendable BCP ideas from all partner countries).

To ensure the quality of the initiative as well as the interesting and professional content external professionals as well as business and art representatives got involved into the working process. The response of the target group has been very positive over the first months of website operation. Similar positive responses arrived from the artists who appreciate the chance to promote their initiatives in the business world.

BCP‐Website “Business and Art” developed for Szczecin


Business Art Column in the Newspaper “Zachodniopomorski Przedsiębiorca”

Inspired by the media campaign developed for the Greifswald region, the Northern Chamber of Commerce decided to launch a media campaign for Szczecin, too, aiming to make both sides, business and culture, aware of the potential benefits of a cooperation. Here, the idea was to develop a related set of articles in regional newspaper that is directly delivered to the stakeholders.

The inspiration for each of the published articles derived from a meeting of business and culture representatives, conducted and moderated by an external expert. Out of a lively exchange within the context of this meeting, an article is developed which is written in a practical form and delivered to the regional newspaper. All articles have a strong regional perspective – which is why mainly stakeholders from the region are invited. The newspaper itself is published in 3500 copies and reaches many decision‐makers and multipliers from the business sector in the Szczecin region.

The first published articles got a positive reaction: The stakeholders find them very informative and in an easy‐to‐read format. Members of the group to whom it has been delivered expressed interest in participating in future article developments.


The first meeting of stakeholders to gain the article inspiration

The second meeting of stakeholders to gain the article inspiration

First issues of the articles, published in 2014


Information Brochure “KULTUR unternehmen / Undertaking CULTURE”

The City of Greifswald developed a brochure that intends to inform potential partners and participants about the idea of ‚Business Culture Partnership’ in a tangible and comprehensive way. The German title and the layout aimed to show the diversity of our cultural landscape as an ‘activity field’. In short sentences, cooperation formats that involve business and culture are presented with the aim to inspire similar initiatives. The brochure emphasizes the benefits for participating enterprises and the importance of culture as a soft location factor. It wants to motivate to join and shall serve as a material of presentation and information about the BCP idea. With such a brochure, both, cultural and business players will clarify their expectations about the activity field of the BCP project in Greifswald. The cultural sector will be strengthened by presenting their contributions for an attractive business location, thus, motivating business players to join in. The business players, on the other side, experience how their enterprise can profit from a Business Culture Partnership and how the region’s economic and general situation can improve sustainably.

The flyer “Undertaking Culture” developed for Greifswald region to inspire entrepreneurs


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Interested in further details? Get in touch with the BCP project team…

www.business‐culture‐partnership.eu

business culture partnership (bcp)

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