Professional sparring partners: On mentoring in the cultural sector

“A mentor is a person who, by stepping into the process of explorations facilitates the journey of the mentee to become a better thinker of their own professional career.” This is how Višnja Kisić described mentorship in her guest appearance in a podcast created by the Cultural Management MA program of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theater.

The reason for this guest appearance was the project “Reinventing Mentoring in Arts Management” (REMAM), on which “Creative Mentorship” cooperates with this Academy from Estonia, as well as Estonian Theater for Young Audiences, Latvian Academy of Culture, Universiteit Antwerpen and the University of the Basque Country. The project is supported by Erasmus + program.

In this episode of the podcast, Višnja, co-founder of the “Creative Mentorship”, practitioner, educator, researcher, and activist in the field of heritage, cultural policy, and cultural management, shared her experience of being both mentee and mentor. She also gave advice on how we can employ our knowledge to help someone in their personal and professional growth. Besides Višnja, Virgo Sillamaa, who is active for over the past 20 years in the domain of music and musical education in Estonia and was building up and managing Music Estonia, Center for Development of Music Industry.

The focus of the REMAM project, which is in progress right now, is researching mentorship as a tool for professional development in education in the domain of cultural management and finding a model to ease the process of finding a mentor, working with them, and making the whole process much easier and accessible. You can read more about this project on the official site. 

You can listen to the whole episode here.