culturalentrepreneur.org

UNESCO will hold its first Forum on Cultural Industries September 24-26, 2009 in Monza, Italy.  I will be attending this inaugural gathering and speaking on New Strategies for Cultural Industries.  The five key new strategies I will present are:

1. Cultural Policy
We need local, national and global organizations to develop and implement policy that cultivates the development of new cultural enterprises through entrepreneurship.

2. Education
We need to develop innovative educational programs that train new cultural entrepreneurs, like we are doing at the Global Center for Cultural Entrepreneurship www.culturalentrepreneur.org, and is being done at the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths, University of London.

3. Investment
We need to develop a new Cultural Enterprise Fund that supports emerging enterprises around the world.  We can demonstrate from several studies that cultural enterprises create jobs, increase tax revenues, enhance livelihoods, attract outside capital, create sustainable economic development, attract other enterprises to the local economy, and enrich the quality of life in our communities.

4. Market Creation and Links
Cultural entrepreneurs are often faced with creating markets.  We must find new ways for our cultural entrepreneurs to tap into markets and invest in their efforts to expand markets and create new markets.

5. Share our Wisdom (SOW)
Those of us who have created cultural enterprises know what it takes to be a cultural entrepreneur; however, there aren’t enough platforms to share our experiences, train new cultural entrepreneurs, and facilitate the growth and creation of more cultural wealth.

I’ll share my thoughts with you on these new strategies in more detail in future posts, and look forward to hearing what new strategies you think cultural industries need to succeed.

Tom Aageson, Co-Founder, www.culturalentrepreneur.org
I can be reached at tom@culturalentrepreneur.org