Vittorio Bianco
Member of the board of Associazione Rete delle Case del Quartiere, a local network of cultural and social centers in Torino, Italy, he coordinates fundraising activities and European projects for the network and for several other non-profits organizations. With a major in Natural Sciences, he started his career in Legambiente, the main environmental organisation in Italy, with a focus on urban ecology and sustainable development; afterwards he expanded his field of activity to other aspects of sustainability in the urban context, promoting cooperation among organisations operating in different sectors (environment, culture, social inclusion, health...), both at local (he has been Vice-President of Mirafiori Community Foundation and of the Agency for Local Development of San Salvario, two districts of Torino) and international level (European Voluntary Service, Life +, Horizon 2020 projects, cooperation programs between Italy and China with Venice International University).
Andreea Iager-Tako
Andreea Iager-Tako has an academic background in psychology and sustainable development, as well as human resources, marketing and management experience in both corporate
and non-profit organizations. Since 2006, she has founded with Norbert Tako 3 NGOs that run activities and projects in the artistic production and education fields. One of them is the social enterprise/independent cultural centre AMBASADA, founded in 2015 . She strongly believes in dialogue, in volunteering and in bringing people together to create strong and responsible communities.
Eleonore Hefner
After receiving a master's degree in Social Science (University Heidelberg), Eleonore worked for the Goethe Institute in Finland, as deputy head of the Coordination Center for Immigrants in Ludwigshafen, as head of the Department for the Cultural Promotion of Ludwigshafen and, since 1995, as managing director of Kultur Rhein-Neckar e. V. (a registered cultural association). She gained experience in managing cultural projects and was able to reflect on this subject in theoretical terms by lecturing on issues relating to cultural work in an immigration society, civil society and participation at the Universities of Heidelberg, Karlsruhe and Mannheim. For the last 20 years, she has been involved in the German-Russian cultural exchange project QUATTROLOGE and many inter- and transcultural projects. She has been a member of the board of the National Sociocultural Association since 2013, and a member of the board of the ENCC.
Helga Massetani Piemonte
Founder of BITAMINE FAKTORIA, a trans-border cultural production and creation factory in Irun, Basque Country, where she is currently content manager and internationalization programs designer, focused on the projection of artistic exchange and networking with local and international partners. She has formalized several international cooperation networks such as Mugakide (cross-border network with Nekatoenea, Hendaia), the Artists mobility program of the Aquitaine-Euskadi Euroregion (with the Basque association Garapen and Fabrique Pola, Bordeaux, as partners), VASE (Program of European mobility with the spaces A Space Arts in England and the Agora creation factory in Berlin), EAS Residency program for the internationalization of Basque art in Latin America that since 2015 connects Euskadi with Buenos Aires (EAS-EZE) and since 2018, in collaboration with the Capacete residence, with Rio de Janeiro (EAS-RIO).
Simona Neumann
Executive Director since 2013 of the Timisoara 2021-European Capital of Culture Association leading the bidding process of the city of Timisoara which, in September 2016, was awarded the title. Previously, she managed multi-stakeholder projects and programmes in Romanian and international contexts in the fields of culture, social development, public diplomacy, people-to-people contacts and civil society development. She has worked at the Intercultural Institute of Timisoara, set up by the Council of Europe; the West University of Timisoara; Veb Academia Europaea – an EU projects consultancy based in Florence, Italy; the Council for International Exchange of Scholars in Washington, DC; United Nations Development Programme in Bucharest; and the European Commission, DG Enlargement in Brussels and Nicosia. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Diplomacy and is specialized in strategic management of non-profit organisations at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Between 2003-2005 she participated in the Security Studies British Council-led project and took part in a research attachment at the Centre for Studies of Security and Diplomacy of the University of Birmingham.
Ivo Peeters
He is the Director of the cultural centre De Zeyp, located in Ganshoren, one of the Brussels' districts. Born in 1954 with a master’s degree in Political and Social science, he has 30 years of experience working at the local level. In 1994, he cofounded the ENCC and headed its coordination office for 10 years as General Secretary. During those first 10 years he organised several international meetings and an international cultural management course (comparable to the current BECC training/staff exchange programme of the ENCC). Today he is the president of the ENCC.
Chris Torch
He currently leads the Artistic Unit at Timisoara 2021 - European Capital of Culture (Romania), since february 2017. He founded and was Artistic/program Director at Intercult , a production and resource unit focused on culture, ideas and the arts. Created in 1996, it is a publically-financed institution, based in Stockholm, managing both a designated Europe Direct office and Access Europa, a platform for cultural organizations in Sweden focusing on international collaboration.
Torch has initiated and led exchanges and co-production with the European Neighborhood, reflected in the long term SEAS project, 2003-2010 and CORNERS, a complex partnership of cultural organisations at the ”edges of Europe”, 2011-2018 , both financed by the EU Creative Europe program.
Torch has been active in the artistic leadership for the winning bids to become European Capitals of Culture at both Matera 2019 and Rijeka 2020. In Rijeka, he was designated as Program Director until the end of 2016, when he was recruited to Timisoara. He co-authored, in 2016, a major study on Audience Development, commissioned by the EU, that analysed over 35 organizations from 22 countries in the EU about their audience engagement policies and methods.
Apart from large-scale project design, Torch contributes to intercultural policies. He serves currently on the Executive Committee for Culture Action Europe, earlier on the Boards of The European Museum Forum and IETM.
Milan Vračar
Milan Vračar studied management in culture and media, and graduated with a study on international theatre festivals. He is an independent cultural producer and president of the Association Kulturanova. He has been involved in many international projects and collaborates on many events in Novi Sad and in Serbia (International festival of Street Musicians IFUS, International Film Festival Cinema city, Festival Days of Brazil – Novi Sad Samba Carnival, EXIT festival, Sterijino pozorje, INFANT.) He also produces and coordinates several innovative art initiatives. He has participated in many international conferences, workshops, summer schools (among which Amsterdam Maastricht Summer University) and residencies (among which Felix Meritis residency in Mains d'Oeuvres, Paris, 2004. and CEC Artslink residency in New York, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco in 2009). He is also board member of several international networks. He lectures on his work in universities in Serbia and elsewhere in Europe, and has collaborated with institutions such as the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Council of Europe, etc. He coordinated the candidacy of Novi Sad for European Capital of Culture. In 2017, he co-founded the independent cultural centre and coworking space LAB.
Ambasada
This multi-functional cultural and resource centre strives to appeal to both the independent cultural sector as well as to the corporate sector as an alternative space for learning and inspiring employees. The centre is the first cultural reconversion of an industrial site in Timisoara, a social enterprise and a cultural hub which offers its infrastructure free of cost in order to support and help develop sustainable cultural initiatives. It is a connection place for people that want to bring positive action and impact through creative changes. Ambasada is a member of TransEuropeHalles.
Solidart & Basca
An initiative of a group of actors, writers, designers, social assistants and youth workers who capitalise on artistic, social and management experiences. They were brought together by the conviction that their collaboration can determine changes.
Timis County Youth Foundation (FITT)
The Timisoara Youth House is a 11.000 m² building with 7 seminar rooms, a cinema, a performance hall, a hotel where young people can stay while visiting the city, a restaurant, an art-music club, a gym and a pub. It is administrated by FITT, an umbrella organisation for youth NGOs in western Romania. With 28 years of existence and more than 30 members, FITT is the oldest and most important and youth organisation in this part of the country. The programmes and activities implemented range from social programmes for disadvantaged young people to cultural programmes, active citizenship and policy development (local and national level).
Foundation Triade / Jecza Gallery
This long-lived public space initially hosted only the Triade Foundation, before being joined by the Jecza Gallery, a venue for contemporary art. While Jecza Gallery, managed by Andrei Jecza, focuses on contemporary art, the Foundation, run by Sorina Jecza, continues a 15-year-old programme of sustaining and promoting local culture, retrospective projects that rediscover and bring forward the avant-garde of the 60s-70s, and also prospective projects, open to a newer generations of artists.
Muzeul Consumatorului Comunist, Teatrul Auăleu & Scârț Loc Lejer!
The Museum of Communist Consumers is a collection of pre-1989 objects in a typical Ceaușescu-era apartment. It’s hosted on the same building as a theatre and a meeting point/café, which we will also visit.
Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theatre
The theatre covers the preferences of the town's multicultural audience through a rich repertoire, with classic and contemporary theatre, one-man or one-woman performances, non-verbal performances, music, puppets and marionette theatre plays. It makes available to the audience a simultaneous translation into Romanian (through earphones or surtitles) in order to facilitate access, but also to show that language is not an obstacle, but a binder.
