Innovation incubator #3
Over the past three years, 15 organizations from Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Italy and Denmark have worked hard to create and enrich creative proposals with innovative practices.
Within the framework of Collab4HySustCCIs, these organizations developed proposals in the areas of:
- Digital & Hybrid Innovation
- Cross-sector collaboration
The results confirm the success of the project’s model of innovation incubation, knowledge exchange and capacity building. In the Knowledge Capiatlisation report on achieved results, you can learn about the successes of the selected creative organizations and find inspiration for creative collaborations in the South East Europe region. A publication is forthcoming, follow our newsletter.
The Collab4HySustCCIs project is co-financed by the EU’s Creative Europe Programme and the National Fund for Culture. Presentations are also found on CreativeSkillsWeek2025 Crossinnovation session,
Crosscon2025 at Subtopia Sweden, PechaKutcha night Sofia.
Study "Humans at play:
Creators and Users"
Led by Intercultura activities were implemented with the support of the National Culture Fund and over 20 partners representing the business, educational and cultural sectors.
A national study was designed to cover the viewpoints and disposition of diverse key stakeholders in the creative ecosystem – 1) players (over 1000 respondents), 2) artists 3) eduators and policy-makers. Read more about this unique study in English here, the presentations on the left.
Competences & micro-credentials
Intercultura Consult is an associate partner in the project Gamebadges - Skill Mapping and Micro-credentials for the Game Industry 2024 - 2026. The lead partner in the project is Metropolia UAS - Finland acvities are co-financed by the Erasmus+ program of the EU.
A key achievement is the competency map developed by the Gamebadges project as well as unique training opportunities for EU game professionals to acquire OR validate game skills. Follow our newsletter for opportunites.
Training & Capacity-building
creatives, culturea and heritage professionals
The trainings on "Vitality" empowered cultural and creative organizations in Sofia and Plovdiv to gainconfidenec and strategic vision. In total 33 participants from across the country worked with 7 international and local experts on audience engagement strategies and new business models.
Organizations, artists, and businesses from the creative ecosystem developed visions for partnerships and connection with audiences, you can consult three training videos in Bulgarian - view .
Incubators 1 & 2
Micro-incubators Time Perspectives (2021 – 2022) and Reconnect (2020 – 2021)
These two micro-incubators led and designed by the ICC team focused on supporting innovative cultural offers through cross-sectoral collaboration. Innovative digital cultural offers and targeted creative collaboration emerged as a need via the opportunities in the digital age (Cherrington&Koleva 2019). Both incubators were based on tailored methods for experimentation, matching expert support, guidance/mentorship, monitoring, assessment of impact and communication of results to very diverse groups in the museum sector, the cultural centres and communities as well as academic audiences.
"Time Perspectives: Long-Term Benefits of the Culture - Audience Relationship involved two museums and two cultural community centres, working in smaller settlements in Bulgaria - the Nаture Science Museum in Cherni Osam; the community centre in the village of Kostenec „Prosveta- 1881“; the community centre „Elin Pelin 1896“ in the town of Elin Pelin and the "House of Humour and Satire" Gabrovo. The four organisations benefited from a small innovation grant to engage external artists, experts and partners from the tourism sector. Each of them obtained an analysis of their key target audience and guidelines on improving /designing new cultural offers .
The ”Reconnect: Audiences and Cultural Content in the Digital Environment” incubator addressed cultural offers in the digital environment. Partners in this project were three free arts scene organisations: the puppet theatre company 'Male Male' piloting new forms of virtual/on-site audience engagement; '36 monkeys' with a science theatre/museum audience pilot and 'Meeting points' that experimented with self-guided 'spice tour' app in their multicutural city offers. Each organisation received micro-funding to pilot new digital offers. A large scale national survey delivered results of vital importance to the CCI sector for years to come. Read more here >> Reconnect: Cultural Content and Audiences in the Digital Environment 2021.
Erasmus Alliance European stories
community-based tours
In celebration of the European Day of Languages in 2023, the European Language Label was awarded to Le LABA in France (leader) and partnering organizations from Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy and Romania for the Knowledge Alliance project European Stories /"Истории от Европа" 2019-2022.
Image: Bordeaux, un eclateur urbaine de L'Alternative Urbaine
During the Covid pandemic, this international project, encouraged the cultural/creative and tourism industry professionals to pave a route in the uncharted terrain of local, vernacular, community-based tourism strategies. ICC engaged in field research, mapping existing organizations and new initiatives, mapping skills needs and new business models. Intercutlura was in charge of design, testing, and delivery of the first training course for story-based cultural heritage mediators in Bulgaria. Guide to design a local tour in English here.
Professional development
Southeast Europe
Cultural managers, professionals and artists gathered for an intensive training program across 3 cities in Bulgaria: Sofia, Kostenets, Plovdiv - European Capital of Culture in 2019. The themes covered by carefully programmed interventions including an analysis of the strategy for the development of heritage and tourism of the Old Town of heritage, Sofia city strategy for cultural policy, new business models and more. The project was managed by a leading partner from Ukraine - "EcoArt". In 2025, a large proportion of colleagues from Ukraine are internally displaced or have migrated to other EU countries. However, the knowledge and experience gained have left traces in the networks of professionals in Bulgaria a well as in the Eastern counties of the EU.