Cultural Enterprise Certificate

2019–2022

The aim of the Cultural Enterprise Certificate is to seek solutions for the lack of co-operation and connection of culture with other sectors and branches. We have categorized the challenge into three problem scopes: lack of connection between culture and other sectors, mostly the economy; lack of cultural finances outside the national budget (namely, adding to the cultural organisations’ own sources, with an emphasis on NGOs); general decrease of interest in culture and thereby consummation of cultural and artistic content itself. 

We shall address the above-mentioned challenges by forming the Cultural Enterprise Certificate, primarily aimed at legal entities outside the cultural field. The certificate represents a standard method to address diverse problems, social as well as more specifically focused. Culture as such, especially non-governmental culture, has not yet introduced such a system. In view of the current needs, we will therefore form a system of certification which could actively tackle the source problems described above.  

By increasing connectivity, we wish to fortify the positive effects of culture on the organisations from other branches. Above all, we wish to encourage companies to use cultural content as a mechanism to motivate their employees, strengthen the values of tolerance and equality within the organisational culture, an alternative to team building, to increase the employer’s good reputation, upgrade the trademark to inner as well as outer target groups. Simultaneously, we aim at transferring the work-method from artistic practices that could contribute to the company’s innovative solutions. Through such connections, we would like to promote lasting partnerships between the sectors in line with the foreign role model of so-called  Art & Business forums, bringing the sectors together through reciprocal knowledge transfer and promotion of networking and dialogue to enable human resources exchange and development of a common vision of the cultural market.  

The project consortium unites the Društvo Asociacija, a content network from the field of culture, The City of Women Association and Društvo humanistov Goriške. Because an entirely new product formation is in question, the project is mostly focused on forming the most adequate form of certification, while at the project conclusion, we also plan to introduce an active test implementation of certification in the chosen enterprises. The consortium intentionally comprises the chosen applicants, given that each of them adequately covers its specific cultural field. In addition, Asociacija as a content network also acts as a reasonable conjunctive institution and the final certificate presenter.  

During the first stage of the project, we will be developing the methodological framework for the successful implementation of certification or the formation of the Cultural Enterprise Certificate. The formation will be based on the transfer of practices from other areas and an implementation of qualitative analysis and the surveys within the companies. That will help us detect the areas of priority which can be addressed by connecting the cultural and economic sectors. The next stage will comprise the implementation of certification test procedures and the adaptation of the model in view of the

Project is co-funded by the Ministry of Public Administration of the Republic of Slovenia.