For this preconference, we'll be hearing from some of the speakers originally planned for the conference, as well as from a few other experts who agreed to join this special conversation.
Geoffrey Brown (the moderator for the opening session) is one of the UK’s leading independent experts in helping the sector understand and access funding from the European Union. He is the director of EUCLID, which managed the UK Cultural Contact Point (CCP – promoting the EU’s Culture programme) from 1999 to 2009, and which now also manages OffWestEnd network of independent, alternative and fringe theatres in London.
Eleonora Belfiore (Italy-UK) is Professor of Communication and Media Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Communication & Culture at Loughborough University. She is also the Co-Director of Women in Academia Support Network and Co-Editor in Chief of the journal Cultural Trends. Her research work focuses on the social impact of the arts and on cultural value. She looks at how governments justify spending public resources on the arts and culture, and concentrates on creating a space to articulate the value of arts and culture beyond a purely economic rhetoric.
Pier Luigi Sacco (Italy) is Professor of Cultural Economics at the IULM University Milan, Co-director of the Computational Human Behavior (CHuB) Lab, Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, and Senior Researcher at metaLAB (at) Harvard. He works and consults internationally on culture-led local development and policy design.
Michel Bauwens (Belgium) is the founder and president of the P2P Foundation. He works in collaboration with a global group of researchers on peer production, governance, and property. Bauwens travels extensively giving workshops and lectures on peer-to-peer and the Commons as emergent paradigms and the opportunities they present to move towards a post-capitalist world. He was the research director of FLOKsociety which produced the first integrated Commons Transition Plan for the government of Ecuador in 2014. He is now part of Commons Transition and is also a founding member of the Commons Strategies Group.
Richard Florida (US) is one of the world’s leading urbanists. He is a researcher and professor, serving as University Professor at University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, and a Distinguished Fellow at NYU’s Schack School of Real Estate He is the author of the award-winning The Rise of the Creative Class and The New Urban Crisis. He is co-founder of CityLab, the leading publication devoted to cities and urbanism. He is an entrepreneur, as founder of the Creative Class Group which works closely with companies and governments worldwide.
Agata Etmanowicz (Poland) For the past 10 years, as part of the Impact Foundation, Agata has been supporting cultural organisations in placing audiences in the heart of everything they do and spreading the joy of audience development. With the Art Factory in Łódź she co-created ART_INKUBATOR to support the growth of young creative entrepreneurs, both locally and internationally. With the Poland Without Barriers Foundation, she promotes accessibility in all aspects of life - from architecture and design to production of culture events. She’s also a great fan of wheelchair rugby, volunteering with the Warsaw Wheelchair Rugby Team and campaigning for a professional approach to adaptive sports.
Pál Szénási (Hungary) is a community developer at A Vértes Agorája, a cultural and educational centre in Tatabánya, Hungary, and an ENCC member.. He designs and implements international projects, conferences, trainings and seminars for cultural professionals. He also supports organisations in participating in European-funded programmes that aim to develop local communities. He has a BA in Cultural Management and a MA in Philosophy (2012); he also spent a year studying the History of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. He is an external trainer for the National Institution of Culture of Hungary.
