Vision: Creative industries represent the field which creates jobs, and generates economic growth and social well-being
Mission: Creating appropriate environment for creative industries development, via relevant programmes, projects and grants.
LEPL Creative Georgia (CG) was created under the ministry of culture and sports of Georgia in 2017 with a goal to create favourable environment for creative industries development.
To fulfil this CG aims for:
– Creating policy framework for sector development, in line with Culture Strategy 2025 goals and objectives;
– raising awareness about Creative Industries;
– Building capacity of creative entrepreneurs through training programs, seminars and other activities;
– Establishing networking platforms;
– Creating funding opportunities and spreading information about existing funding opportunities;
– Supporting export of creative goods and in general, internationalization of sector;
– Supporting development of research activities in the creative industries sector.
CG operations are based on two main organizational directions – Creative industries Division and Creative Europe Desk. Director of the organization manages each unit through the allocated direction heads. Administrative resources includes – administrative manager, financial manager, procurement manager, grants programme manager, lawyer and PR manager. International and Local Experts boards and interagency committee play an important role in shaping of organizational strategic vision and directions, as well as informing and engaging various actors and beneficiaries in Creative Georgia activities.
CG is a host organisation of Creative Europe Desk. Special unit has been dedicated to supporting awareness-raising and capacity building for cultural professionals who want to apply for Creative Europe grant schemes for Culture and/or Media sub-programmes.
After its establishment, CG has actively started working towards achieving its main goal. Within the creative industries (CID) Division, 2 programmes have been created, 1) research programme to support development of mapping systems and research activities within the sector and 2) capacity building programme to foster development of entrepreneurial and management skills of creatives residing in Georgia.
Within the CID unit, in cooperation with different international organisations, various activities have been implemented for supporting awareness rising, mapping and capacity building in creative industries sector.
- Information meetings, regional info-tours (in 15 settlements throughout the country) and public
lectures have been organised to support awareness rising about the sector (around 25 events, 400 attendees);
- Competitions, trainings, workshops for entrepreneurial skills development have been organised within the country (11 events, around 400 participants), among them for students from higher education institutions;
- In order to fill the gap that lies in absence of learning materials in Georgian language, 2 guidelines have been translated from English language – 1) Creative Entrepreneurship toolkit by NESTA and 2) Creative Hubs Toolkit by Creative England;
- Classification of creative industries – based on NACE codes has been created (Creative Georgia);
- In the framework of Creative Spark Programme, CG has obtained funding for its 2 projects focused on development of entrepreneurship in higher educational institutions.
1) First project, named UP-start, aims to develop entrepreneurial skillset of students from Tbilisi State Arts Academy. Within the project, creative media incubator will be created on the basis of media faculty of the academy, ToTs in entrepreneurship will be held for academic staff and boot camp for students will be organised.
2) Second project – Re-conception, aims at museum business development founding on students’ entrepreneurial mind. In particular, within the project, ToTs for museum staff will be held, bootcamp for students from different higher education institutions will be organised, resulting in creation of new, more business oriented concepts for several museums in Tbilisi and in the regions. In addition, specific guidebook for museum business development in Georgia will be elaborated.
- CID unit has started facilitating the process of creative clusters/hubs creation within the country. For this purposes, CG has initiated the project “Creative Cluster Ecosystem Development in Georgia” that has been funded under the EU-UNESCO expert facility program. Within this initiative, CG aims to analyse international and local best practices to develop supportive mechanisms focused at accelerating the revitalization of non-functional spaces through transformations into creative clusters. 2-year project will incorporate different elements among them: conducting research preparing policy paper and multistakeholder action plan, organising capacity building and awareness-raising activities, etc.
- CID unit is working on creative industries multilayer webplatform project that will be the only platform in the Caucasus region for creative and innovative professionals and entities to present themselves, network and learn in a bilingual web space, search partners and be updated with sector funding and learning opportunities.
- Cultural Routes Mobile Application has been created in order to support development of cultural routes and cultural tourism in Georgia.
From 2019, Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports delegated new functions to CG, in particular LEPL has announced 5 competitions, from which, 1 – Creative Industries Development Competition – is fully oriented on developing creative entrepreneurship ecosystem in Georgia, offering 20 000GEL to projects that support ecosystem stimulation and 5000GEL for creative start-ups. In the frame of another competition – 2 – Mobility of Artists – among others, money can be received by creative entrepreneurs and individuals, who want to attend/participate in different international events, such are incubators, accelerators, start-up fairs, trainings, etc. Other competitions are oriented on supporting 3 – Festivals, 4 – Residency Programmes and 5 – Contemporary Art development in the regions.
CG organised 7 exhibitions within the frame of Georgia Guest of Honour at Frankfurt Book Fair. In particular in – Deutsches Architecture Museum, Applied Art Museum, Portikus Frankfurt, Basis Frankfurt, Atelie Frankfurt, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, MMK Frankfurt. Exhibitions aimed to provide different view and experience in various fields like architecture and urban development based on the example of the capital Tbilisi, historical overviews in the field of photography and new tendences, hightliget through subculture recent movements;CG has been the facilitator organisation for representing Georgian national pavilion at the 58th International Venice Biennale 2019. CG announced the call, selected the winning project and facilitated the process connected to its presentation.
When planning and implementing its projects, CG collaborates with local or international partners. Among them, organisation actively works with British Council, Goethe Institute Georgia, EU delegation in Georgia, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Creative Estonia, Hamburg Kreativ Gesellschaft, East Anglia University, Creative Solutions, European Creative Business Network, UNCTAD and etc.
Contact Information:
Address: Viktor Dolidze str. Block 28, Tbilisi, Georgia
Email: info@creativegeorgia.ge
Website: creativegeorgia.ge