I represented Danscentrum Väst, a regional organization for professional dancers in Göteborg. I presented the dance-entrepreneurial project “KLEO” at a European Union conference in Perugia, Italy.
“Cultural Entrepreneurship
One definition of the Entrepreneur is of a person who sees opportunities, who has a talent for identifying the need for a certain product or service and then tries to fill that need.
Many artists or culture workers aren’t really comfortable with identifying themselves as Entrepreneurs. More often than not, one has difficulties in managing the business side of one’s practice, or even; despise having to deal with the economical realities of one’s work. The idea being that the artistic integrity is somehow compromised by producing commercial work.
Through it’s various activities, The Kleo project wants to re-educate the artistic community by proposing that artists, who are already highly creative and visionary, use their creativity not only to make a specific work of art or performance but also to be creative when creating work opportunities for themselves and others. Our idea of the cultural entrepreneur is of one who sees the opportunity to create art of quality and integrity within non-existent, non-traditional or unlikely contexts. In this way, artists can create new platforms and new target audiences for their work.”