ELCONSERVATORIO.ES AT FACTORÍA CULTURAL REGIÓN DE MURCIA

Elconservatorio.es, selected in the first call of Factoría Cultural/Vivero de Industrias Creativas - Región de Murcia

Factoría Cultural is a business incubator and accelerator specialised in the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI). It helps people to start up, innovate and become sustainable in sectors such as design, tourism, the music industry, the performing arts and education. As well as specific training programmes in CCI entrepreneurship, it offers mentoring, personalised advice, professional talks and courses open to the public.

It was born in Madrid (Nave 1, Matadero) and officially opens its doors in Murcia (Centro Párraga) on 2 May 2017.

On 24 April 2017 the jury met at the Centro Párraga in Murcia to evaluate and select projects for the first call for grants for the creative and cultural industries, which received a total of 76 applications.

23 were the proposals selected, from very different fields: animation, performing arts, visual arts, communication, design, publishing, gastronomy, fashion, music, production and video games. Among them, elconservatorio.es!

In short: from 2 May 2017 until 31 January 2018, elconservatorio.es enjoys a residency workspace (at the Centro Párraga) and develops its project thanks to an innovation plan, a training itinerary, networking, talks, legal and employment advice, a forum of experts, collaborators, and more.

For those of us who have spent our whole lives in the arts, focused on finding an image, a sound, on mastering the technical side that falls to us and on creating and launching ideas, this residency is... quite simply indispensable.

It forces you to keep your feet on the ground. Creativity, branding, marketing, digital strategy, trademarks and patents, funding, offer, legal forms, business models, design thinking, internationalisation and programmes, business plan, budgets, and so on become tools to which, otherwise, we simply would not have paid attention.

Yes, we have surely all heard about all of this. But putting it into practice is another matter.

Because elconservatorio.es as an idea is already several years old. But Factoría Cultural Región de Murcia has been the guiding framework in which we have defined ourselves, structured our lines of work, given them shape and made them known... and along the way we have met a fantastic circle of graphic designers, fashion and furniture designers, illustrators, anthropologists, musicians, managers, inventors, visual artists and others, who enrich us even as they try to carry their own artistic projects forward and make them viable.

The best part: many of them are already companions and colleagues for the future, artistic collaborations still to come.

And meanwhile here we are, launching a project of sound heritage and gastronomy with the full conviction that it will be sustainable, that the arts and creativity have much to say in today's world, and that there are a thousand and one ways to innovate: stories and fantasy never run dry.