This week, the People & Culture 2021 digital convention brings together the most burning cultural policy issues. The convention will highlight artistic & cultural policy conversations and debate the importance of the creative industries. eXpression Umeå is participating in the convention through the industry network CreARTive and during one of the arranged seminars Johanna Forsberg, business coach at eXpression Umeå raised the question from the headline.  

Johanna has spent the last 17 years running a business as a full-time net sculptor and has learned a lot through this, which she now puts into practice and passes on in her role as a business coach at eXpression Umeå. In her role as business coach and programme manager for eXpression Design, she empowers creatives by linking them with local manufacturers. During the seminar, she chose to focus on the need for more meeting places and the opportunity for creators to meet.

We need to create more places and contexts for creators, whether they are artists, programmers or engineers, to come together across industries and to have the tools to put value on their talents.  

In her role as an artist and entrepreneur, Johanna testifies that she has encountered the issue, why should we make them entrepreneurs, isn't putting them in the wrong suit? A description she does not subscribe to, but is a distorted view of what it means to be an entrepreneur. 

Giving driven creators the keys to valuing their skills is, by extension, empowering, giving confidence and status to an industry relegated to subsidies and a pat on the head. 

Johanna says the world needs lots of fearless artists, computer game animators, architects and engineers who unlock the imagination on a new level and help us see structure and context in our societies, taking us beyond words. Creative entrepreneurs can give us context and help us paint a world picture with solutions we haven't yet seen. 

So why do artists, programmers and engineers need to work together? Because it's in the intersection of these skills that norm-breaking ideas are created that challenge us to evolve. 

If you want to watch the broadcast of the seminar with Johanna afterwards you will find it here: https://folkochkultur2021.redbee.live/asset/3785_DB29BBb

If you want to read more about the eXpression Design programme that Johanna is responsible for, you can find it here: eXpression Design