“Creative mentorship” affirms mentoring as a tool of personal and professional development, strengthens the capacities of the cultural sector and provides support to prospective professionals interested in developing, networking and sharing knowledge and experience. We want to build, gather and support a community of motivated and socially responsible individuals that will contribute to the development of a society based on creativity, culture, knowledge and mutual cooperation.

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Between freedom and Precarity – Workers in the cultural field in a search for an (un)stable job

Serbia has a lot of creative people and there lies our chance. That creativity should be encouraged and incited. Creative industry is the fastest growing sector in the country, with employees who are between 25 and 44 years old. Serbia finally recognized the importance of that sector. It has a core role in the forming of new generations, in tourism development, rebranding of Serbia, promoting our country as creative and innovative destination. Also, it keeps young people from leaving the country, and we would like to invite those who have already left, to come back. We want the foreigners to come and start their own business. The task and the obligation of the present Government is to provide them with favorable conditions. I commit myself to do this and I give my word that this Government will support these efforts“, said the Prime Minister of Serbia, Ana Brnabic, at the opening of the conference Creative Serbia that was recently held in Kinoteka.

 

The introductory public event of the educational part of the “Creative Mentorship ” programme will be held on Saturday, 31 March, at 6 p.m. in the Artget gallery (Cultural center of Belgrade). It will open the cycle of discussions about the problems that workers in the cultural and creative sector in Serbia are faced with. Our guests will be outstanding professionals from the related fields. The first topic that we will speak about is the transformation of work and working conditions in the cultural field.

Flexible working hours, working at night, on weekends; working from home, hotel, airport, park; global payments and global competition; working without contracts, with short-time contracts; part-time work, work on projects, remote work via Internet; frequent change of employers,  disappearance of syndicate and constant work search, continuous education that leads to additional qualification, retraining…

All those phenomena are the part of the new global Post-Fordist production system. Although this transformation is originally related to rich countries and service industries, this system is now implemented in the whole world and in all the labor fields, including the field of culture and creative industries in Serbia.

How can we interpret those changes? Do they bring freedom or new forms of  freelancers’ (fl)exploitation in culture? Who will profit and who will lose after the introduction of those changes? Which personal and collective strategies are possible, and which ones are already used in coping with this situation?

We will discuss all of these questions and doubts with Milena Dragićević Šešić, head of  UNESCO Chair in cultural policy and management, University of Arts in Belgrade; Marijana Cvetković, co-founder of  the Kondenz festival and Stanica (Station) – service for contemporary dance, Marko Radenković, founder of creative hub Nova Iskra and Olga Svoboda, director of  GI group HR solutions company in Serbia.

The facilitator will be dr Goran Tomka, culturologist.

Our partner in this programme will be the Cultural Center of Belgrade.

Sponsors of the fourth cycle of the “Creative Metorship” programme are: MEDICON, Titan Cementara Kosjerić, Coca Cola Hellenic, Ministry of culture and information of the Republic of Serbia, ERSTE bank, Embassy of Sweden in Belgrade and French Institute in Serbia. Our partners are: Gi Group HR Solutions, Nova Iskra, Mokrin House, printing house Vizartis, EPIC ASSISTANTS, Designed.rs etc.

You can follow the Facebook event on this link.