From Artist to Entrepreneur
My first 15 days
A six-months experience in Essen, Germany. From the 23rd of April to the 22nd of October.
My Erasmus experience is a little bit different from the “traditional” ones you may have already know. Usually, both HE and NE haven’t meet until the first day of the experience, but in my case, it was my HE who encourage me to apply to the EYE programme. As an audio-visual artist, and with a huge “applying to everything I see” spirit, I met my host organization on last December for an artistic residence. During this experience, I haStory 1d the chance to meet a Serbian mathematician girl who was already involved in the EYE programme. Both encouraged me to transform my natural skill of connecting people from different parts of the world and fields into a business, and the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs was the answer.
During the first weeks, you get to know the true essence of the host organization. Maybe, even before arriving, you only had a possible vision of how things are being made through the web page and social media, but it’s with the human interaction that you really get the true impression and, in my case, got fascinated about it. The work environment is completely different to what we are traditionally used to, it’s freer and less structured, and I get the chance to laugh daily with professionals from diverse fields and subjectivities. A peaceful air surrounds the Ruhrgebit.
The first 15 days have gone by. The people in this region are so friendly, talented and outgoing, and I’m not only talking about the colleagues from the organization, but also those on the streets. It doesn’t matter that I don’t speak German, they still want to talk to me. The locals are the true heart of the region. At the second day that I was here, I was able to present my business model to the city council, a surprise that my HE had going on. They were so interested to hear that an Italian-Argentine was looking forward to connecting Italy, Germany and Latin America creative industries to work altogether through the power of science, art and technology. This nurture my enthusiasm to keep on going with becoming an entrepreneur, something that never came up into my mind before. Similarly, I found out that more Erasmus people are coming, it will be great to see how the same programme experience in the equal location ends up being for others.
