From Artist to Entrepreneur
A six-months experience in Essen, Germany. From the 23rd of April to the 22nd of October.
Almost ten weeks of the EYE program has gone by. This city makes me feel like home, something funny to say as I have mostly lived between Argentina and Italy, three completely different cultures and languages that in reality have so much more in common than they could ever imagine.
Over the last weeks at the lab, I’ve mostly helped with their social media and international relations management between local labs and creative industries from Latin America and Europe. The great thing is I’m helping them with the development of a Creative Congress that will take place in Essen by the end of the year. During this time, local artists will fly to Santiago de Chile to show their works and to connect different countries with a VR live set-up. After that, artists from Argentina and Perú will fly to Essen to create altogether with local artists and specialized professionals. On the last day, an event will take place to kick-off the cooperation between Europe and Latin America. This is becoming a great experience as the company I’m building under the EYE program is exactly all the tasks I’m taking part in here. It’s like a practice of future reality.
About building the company itself, there are still things I don’t get to understand completely due to my background and specialization. It’s not easy to adapt your freestyle mindset from an artistic background into a business model. My main goal from this experience is to achieve the equilibrium between the heart of the artist with the brain of an entrepreneur. Similarly, to be able to put a price and obtain profit in something made with the sentiment, with heart. So, although is getting a little bit hard for me to think financially in short and long-term, I’m receiving a lot of help from my HE and the people from the lab. While making the Financial Plan and observing those huge amounts of possible numbers from today to five years in the future, you get overwhelmed and a little bit scared or pressured for it to become true. So, I’m mostly living the moment and trying to learn as much as possible in order to become a better version of myself.
Gladly, another EYE program colleague has arrived and he also is from Italy. So, every day I end-up switching languages, going from English to Italian to Spanish while trying to understand German in the street. The great thing about Niccolò da Milano is that he also wants to visit everywhere and to enjoy the staying, so now I have a fellow countryman to go around the city. Everyone in Essen is so kind and friendly, they invite us to their festivals, celebrations and outside events. You can see the summer feeling in their eyes.
