Female artists and creatives have experienced loss of business and income during Covid-19. The project envisages a skills injection through tailored learning and knowledge exchange to enable creative businesses to take their work online, which we term virtualisation. This could be staging events, promotion of artist portfolios or facilitating online sales and projects which enhance soft skills, adaptability and resilience for online business delivery models, ensuring that businesses thrive and survive. The purpose of the project is to revive and extend methods by which audiences are reached to reinvigorate income streams and individuals’ business sustainability through skills development. The context for this project arises from the unprecedented business disruption across Europe. Women in particular have been badly affected, notably female artists and creatives. Many may be disadvantaged, excluded, migrants, affected by business curtailment during Covid-19 and suffering economic hardship. Many of the businesses in the arts and creative sector consist of sole traders or SMEs and the digital competence required to take businesses online in a short timescale have resulted in many being economically inactive, with livelihoods threatened. This is an innovative project for female artists and creatives to sustain their businesses through virtualisation and digital competence to facilitate commercialisation, routes to market, digital performance and to combat the unforeseen economic disruption and business survival during and after Covid-19. This will indirectly benefit arts and creative communities across Europe by bringing digital arts to the masses. Research on early adopters to identify guidance on successful virtualisation, theory, models, readings and case studies will take place. The Local Digikommunes provide an experimental space where learners can test out ideas, plan virtualisation, make short demos e.g short online presentations, produce digital posters for events, and trial methods of reaching an audience through live-streaming. Exploration of soft and hard skills such as online sales and marketing will take place and methods will include self-assessments, quizzes, reflection, reflective exercises and production of digital products surrounding an arts/ creative event. Learning from peers will be encouraged and the project acknowledges the social aspect of learning and builds on the resources and particular skills of individual practitioners. The project will encourage participation of female artists and creatives in each partner country. The training in each country will involve 10-15 female artists and creatives and the Local Digikommunes will involve 5-8 per country. The Digital Arts Spaces will involve a min. 6 female artists and creatives per partner country, potentially reaching an audience of 15 in each session, (therefore up to 60 in total) as arts and creative businesses are showcased, premiered and taken to the masses. The 4 Intellectual Outputs are as follows: IO1 – Skills portfolio: The learning phases to investigate already successful online arts businesses and fact-finding to identify the digital skills particular to digital competence in an online environment. IO2 – Digital training: Training modules in digital hard skills to enhance business awareness and digital competence, based on themes and needs emerging from IO1. IO3 – Local DigiKommunes: The local Digikommunes provide the supportive and reflective spaces for trial and error, planning, testing, experimentation and exploratory thinking, providing a space where the hard and soft skills may be applied and implemented. IO4 – Digital Art Spaces: This inclusive output will provide exposure to audiences, experimentation with virtualisation of goods and services, feedback from audiences and consumers and individual reflection on skills, putting what has been learned into action. It is envisaged that arts and creative businesses which found livelihoods curtailed will be in a positive position at the end of the project to commercialise their ideas, having found a sustainable, digital, business model for successful continuation of the business. The project is founded on innovative social learning, and includes provision of training to facilitate the hard and soft skills for virtualisation, online approaches and business continuation during Covid-19 and beyond. The enhanced skills individuals achieve by participation in the project will help support economic participation, business continuance and contribute to future proofing arts and creative female businesses against further Covid-19 repercussions. Across EU partners, a wider digital arts community will be promoted and accessed by audiences. There is also an opportunity to leverage economies of scale to promote events, goods and services, in sustainable ways, collaboratively where possible, strengthening local and European networks and local skills within the creative economy.
The objectives were to develop training & resources to support female run arts/creative businesses to diversify and make better use of digital tools to build their client base. More specifically the aims of the project were to: Develop an innovative training programme to develop digital skills of female artists/creatives running business. Develop a methodology which would bring together peer coaching and mentoring with Action Learning techniques to both increase soft skills of female artists/creative running business (including self-efficacy, confidence, communication) and build new networks of artists in local areas. Provide an online space where artists can continue to access training materials and other project resources on an ongoing basis Provide a space for artists to showcase their work and put the digital skills developed during the programme into action The implementation of the above led to: Increasing the digital skills of female artists/creatives running businesses Increasing the soft skills of female artists/creatives running businesses Increasing the capacity of partner organisations and other training/cultural organisations to support female artists in the future Increased exposure of female artists’ work online.
The DigiKommune project aimed to support female-led creative businesses during and post pandemic by providing tailored learning and resources to help them move their operations online. The context for this project and the needs addressed were the unprecedented business disruption across Europe due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Women were particularly affected by the restrictions put into place by governments across the world, in order to combat the disease. One of the most highly affected groups was female creative entrepreneurs, many of which were disadvantaged or excluded as a result of circumstances. Many of the businesses in the art and creative sector consist of sole traders or SMEs and the digital competences which were required to take their businesses online within a short timescale, prevented them from continuing to work during the peak of the pandemic. This resulted in economic hardship and livelihoods being threatened. We have addressed these needs by developing training and resources which can help to build digital skills amongst the target group and help them to diversify their business practices more easily, to increase resilience and build client bases.