Young Cultural Innovators Forum

A 10-Year Commitment

In this age of austerity, the arts and culture sector is woefully under resourced. Through a new decade-long project, Salzburg Global will help hundreds of young Fellows to find innovative solutions to sustaining the arts and supporting society at large.

Young minds in the culture and arts sectors are providing some of the most imaginative new impulses for social improvement and sustainable economic development around the world today. Young artists, creative entrepreneurs and cultural leaders are demonstrating the creative vision, talent, and energy that our societies need to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Salzburg Global Seminar, which has a long history of programs both on culture and the arts and young leadership, aims to help nurture these young minds with the launch of its ten-year program: Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators. In 2012, the Young Cultural Leaders Forum, in partnership with US-based National Arts Strategies, brought together 47 young cultural leaders from 37 countries around the globe for an intensive leadership development program. In 2013, 13 of this original cohort, together with other experts, returned to Salzburg to help develop the Young Cultural Innovators program.

“We really believe in and have had many years of programming around the transformative potential of the arts to improve livelihoods and quality of life, to revitalize the way we educate, and to leverage completely undreamt of cultural opportunities into the future decades,” says Clare Shine, Salzburg Global Vice President and Chief Program Officer.

“CULTURAL INNOVATORS ARE AN ABSOLUTE FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH.”

“Cultural innovators with this kind of skillset are an absolute force to be reckoned with and they will help politicians in their countries and mainstream businesses, just as much as they help civil society and community groups,” she adds.

The creative industries are drivers of economic development and social inclusion, yet the arts are often underfunded. “Money coming from government, sponsors, foundations, and international donors is getting less and less,” explains Salzburg Global Fellow, YCI strategist and academic, Dr. Lydia Varbanova.

“Therefore artists and cultural managers require strategic entrepreneurial thinking and actions.”

Over the course of the next decade, the development of the YCI Forum will be central to Salzburg Global’s Imagination Cluster program, as part of its new strategic vision and “triple lens thinking.”

“Salzburg Global is committed to making the YCI Forum an ongoing, vibrant focal point for international exchange, emerging leadership, and innovation in the cultural sector,” says Salzburg Global Program Director for Culture and the Arts, Susanna Seidl-Fox.

“Over the course of the next ten years, we hope to generate a critical mass of 500 Salzburg Global Fellows who will continue to work together and collaborate with each other, creating dynamic culture hubs across the world to engage and act as a resource for other young cultural innovators at the local level.”