Innovation incubator #3
Collaborative Innovation for Hybrid and Sustainability Uptake in Cultural and Creative Industries is the innovation incubator known as Collab 4HySustCCI which has supported 15 creative organisations iselected in an open call. They have integrated an innovation in: audience engagement / hybrid approaches OR in cross-sectoral collaboration. The project is fostering collaboration in the region of SoutheastEurope via: guidance, expert mentor support, and a microgrant to undertake incubation-based prototyping.
Now available is the Capitalisation of Knowledge report. You can read/download the report » in English and Bulgarian.
On September 25 the project will be be part of the 
Creative Skills Week 2025 CSW2025 conference programme building cross-sector alliances, promoting lifelong learning, and future-proofing the Cultural and Creative Sectors. The project was also showcased on 25 April, 2025 at the PetchaKuchaNight Sofia and at the Cross Con - The international Cross Innovation Conference 2025 hosted by Subtopia, Sweden. This ambitious project is supported by the Creative Europe program and is a patnership of Materahub (Italy - coordinator), Intercultura Consult (Bulgaria) , Nova Iskra (Serbia), Syn+ Ergasia (Greece) , and The Flying Theatre (Denmark). It is supported by the National Culture Fund of Bulgaria and municipality Plovdiv ECoC2019.
Creative ecosystem Research
"Humans at play: Creators and Users"
The project "Humans at play: Creators and Users" of Intercultura Consult was implemented with the support of the National Culture Fund and over 20 partners representing the business, educational and cultural sectors.
The study was designed to cover the viewpoints and disposition of diverse key stakeholders in the creative ecosystem – players, creators and other creatives, educators, support organisations …
Publications in in English are found here.
Competences and micro-credential
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. The project is co-financed by the Erasmus+ program of the EU.
Milena Berbenkova participated in Game Dev Day 2 in Sofia 2024 where Intercultura presented the competency map developed in the Gamebadges project as well as opportunities for Bulgarian participants to acquire skills.
Publications in Bulgarian can be requested here, articles in English can be found here.
Training
creatives and culture professionals
In 2023, we held two trainings on the topic of "Vitality" for cultural and creative organizations in March in Sofia and in August in Plovdiv. In total 33 participants from across the country received training by 7 international and local experts on key topic areas and discovered new business models.
For all organizations, artists, and businesses from the creative ecosystem who wish to develop their organisation in terms of partnerships and connection with audiences, we have prepared three training videos in Bulgarian. View them.
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. They focused on innovative digital cultural offers and targeted creative collaboration. Inhouse research had already pointed that cultural Leadership can be community generated building on opportunities in the digital age (Cherrington&Koleva 2019). Intercultura consult initiated these projects as platform to pilot innovation intervention even prior the Covid pandemic. 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.
European stories
Erasmus Alliance for community 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
It was during the Covid pandemic, that , this international project, encouraged the cultural and creative professionals 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. The guide for designing a local tour in English can be found here.
Professional development
Souteast Europe
Cultural managers, professionals and artists participated in an intensive training program involving 3 cities in Bulgaria: Sofia, Kostenets, Plovdiv, which was already preparing for the 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.