This fall, the Creative Mentorship team held a series of interactive lectures in cultural institutions in Belgrade!

In the past 11 years, as part of our programme, many participants came from the institutional sector of culture. Based on many years of work experience and conversations with them, we have come to the conclusion, there is still an unknown about what mentoring is and how it can be applied in the daily work of employees in collectives in cultural institutions in our country. In order to encourage certain collectives in several cultural institutions to apply the mentoring methodology in their daily work, the Creative Mentorship team came up with the idea of ​​realizing a series of interactive lectures for employees in 3 cultural institutions in Belgrade – in the Museum of African Art, the Library of the City of Belgrade and the Cultural center of Belgrade.

The aim of our lectures was to introduce and better familiarize these collectives with the principles of mentoring and its benefits, so that they can use them in their further personal and professional development.

What connects the cultural institutions where the Creative Mentorship team held lectures this fall is that several employees of the aforementioned institutions participated in our mentoring program. Alumni Zorana Đaković Minniti, Jasmina Ninkov and Jasna Brkić responded to the invitation to share with their colleagues how mentoring influenced their professional development and what they gained from participating in the program. With their active participation, they added special importance to the lecture.

During the two-hour interactive lecture, the Creative Mentorship team pointed out to the attendees what mentoring as a practice in the cultural sector enables and what are the benefits of having a mentor. The employees in cultural institutions were shown more closely what are the steps for establishing a mentoring relationship, and then each step in this process was explained in detail during the lecture.The first step, for them as future mentees would be to set personal goals to work towards. In this part of the presentation, our alumni shared their experience and what their goals were when they applied for our program, but also what motivated them to realize that they needed a mentor at that career stage.

Participantes had the opportunity to do two short exercises – setting goals and reflecting on their own capacities – in order to become more aware of the challenges they are currently facing and what could potentially be their goal if they established a mentoring relationship.

During the lecture, we also talked about how important it is to think about the profile of the mentor with whom they would like to work, and after that, a certain part of the time was dedicated to discussing where employees of cultural institutions could potentially find their future mentor.

The Creative Mentorship team underlined the fact of how important it is and how contact will be established for the first time between a mentoring couple, and those present at the lecture were given concrete advice on how to establish and achieve a successful mentoring relationship.

The Creative Mentorship team hopes that these lectures were inspiring for the employees of the mentioned cultural institutions and that after our meetings they will be encouraged to further explore and dare to establish a mentoring relationship, and perhaps even a mentoring program within their institution, with the aim of working on their personal and professional development.