The Cultural Entrepreneurship Bootcamp was held over 4 days from 6-9 November 2018 at Hub@Goethe and was facilitated by Belisa Rodrigues of Belle and Co. and Russel Hlongwane.
The Goethe-Institut Johannesburg offers entrepreneurs a space to grow their creative businesses, this space is located within the Goethe Library-Gamebox-Hub complex. Part of the Hub programme offering is a four-day intensive Cultural Entrepreneurship Bootcamp facilitated by local South African creative and cultural experts. This offer was extended to a select number of entrepreneurs active in the creative and cultural field.
The purpose was to connect fellow start-ups and entrepreneurs, like the ones from Hub@Goethe with others operating within the South African creative and cultural space, in order to share new ideas, solutions and form key industry collaborations.
The facilitators took the 20 participants through a design thinking process, where teams had to work on real ideas and challenges. The below 4 challenges were eventually elected and worked on:
✅HMW connect small holder farmers to global markets?; ✅ HMW build copyright into Indigenous Knowledge forms?; ✅HMW enabling emerging visual artists to access markets?; ✅ HMW build an alternative free ISP using “expired data”?
Some elements covered included:
- Synthesizing business ideas after finding out more about customer needs
- Defining your offering, your market and the resources you need
- Refining your Value Proposition for your audiences and customers
- Prototyping your product or service
- Financing models in the creative & cultural sectors in South Africa
- Practicing to pitch and present your findings
Besides learning about 11 different business models and using role play to demonstrate these, the most important part of the programme was pitching and prototyping presented on the last day. There was huge relief and disbelief from the groups on how much can be achieved in 4 days after intense focused energy and team work!
Prototypes ranged from giant cellphone application to service role play to web platform and even an online gallery. Critical peer feedback on pitch delivery, style and storytelling was also shared.
Below a few key moments. Thank you to everyone who brought their entire person into the process. We hope you have your exit strategy sorted 😉
Thank you to Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, Belle & Co. and @Russel Hlongwane for the time, effort and support in holding space, facilitating process and providing guidance and at times input.
