Hi every one, this is Yue and today I started my first day of internship at CIDA! I am studying my master degree in Cultural and Creative industries at King's College London and this experience will enable me to gain more hands-on experience and knowledge about how SMEs within these industries work. Moreover, though my dissertation will focus only on fashion bloggers in China, I am always interested in cultural entrepreneurship and cultural entrepreneurs. I would like to start my own company in a few years. Therefore, I believe this internship would be valuable experience to my future career.
After settling all the things down, I began to read through all the cases that CIDA has been working on in the recent ten years. These materials give me a clearer idea about what CIDA is and what is has always been focusing on. From these leaflets and booklets, I find that helping potential creative entrepreneurs to further develop and complete their business ideas, teaching them how to get more loans in order to expand their business, creating opportunities for them to setting up networking which is valuable for the future growth of companies within CCIs are the main themes of CIDA. In the early years, it seemed like there have been a lot of events focusing on the music industries while in recent years the focus has been shifted to the whole CCIs which would engage more people including politicians, academics, creative artists, senior managers within creative companies etc. I think this is a positive shift because this enables more people be involved in the events and get inspired, which would be beneficial to the whole industries.
There are two other things which impress me most. First is that CIDA even provided events (such as the ‘GET CREATIVE DAY’ in 2006) for children--- the future cultural entrepreneurs. There were different events designed for all ages: from 3 to adults and older people. I used to think that CIDA would only deal with creatives, academics etc. I have never heard of events like this before in my country because in our culture, children have nothing to do with business. However, I find that some of the guest speakers in the past lectures were only teenagers. This made me realise that in CCIs, age and experience is not the determine factor of success. I kept thinking maybe we should start programme like this to cultivate entrepreneurship in children so that they can become more creative and independent. In this way, maybe there would be more cultural entrepreneurs in China in the future.
Another thing that impresses me is the ‘Overlay – Brick Lane’ programme in 2009. CIDA sent out a call for artists to cover 54 m2 of builders hoarding around the grade 1 listed building the ‘ Jamme Masjid’, which was closed to traffic, between the junction of Fournier Street and Princelet Street. 13 creatives from different artistic backgrounds including painting, drawing and even graffiti were selected to take part providing them with a fantastic opportunity to promote their work as well as developing a sense of ownership and involvement of local people in the development process of the area. I am interested in this because I have written an essay about whether graffiti should be considered as crime during my pre-session course. I believe that graffiti should be viewed as art while the artists should paint them in legal places. Thus I find this programme meaningful because it on the one hand promotes graffiti, on the other hand suggest artists to cultivate a sense of ownership.
After finished these materials, I feel excited and energetic about the coming days. I am ready to make my own contributions to this organisation!
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