With my job and study experiences in social media management, web writing and digital communication, public relations and languages, I strongly wanted to mix all those experiences and provide a host entrepreneur with them, in return for learning the know-how about starting my business idea ‘Tiresias’, a cultural centre linked to the LGBT+ world and items in my homwtown in Calabria, Southern Italy, which is the main reason why I have decided to partecipate at the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme that I discovered thanks to a friend of mine.
This was a precious occasion to broaden my experience and forge new relationships abroad. I chose to join my host entrepreneur because she founded Prole, an independent LGBT+ bookstore and publishing house in Barcelona, a city that offers a lot of occasions to work for LGTB+ rights. Staying for a six-month period in contact with Prole let me get a lot of benefits, for example getting skills in managing a cultural entity and creating events.
The activities undertaken were several on a daily routine during my stay, starting from a good maintenance of the bookstore in terms of cleaning and welcoming, customer service, bookshop at local events, updating social media pages with the latest publishing releases and managing online purchases with customers. My host entrepreneur and her job partners have always provided me with the right tools to undertake every daily task, despite rarely some misunderstanding may have arisen as it may happen in any job collaboration.
As I have decided to move back to Barcelona for a long-term period of work, it is almost sure that I would like to create any joint event or any other form of cooperation with Prole in the future. My stay at Prole made me achieve important skills in terms of how to manage a bookstore and all related stuff and how to create a safe relationship with other cultural entities and people working in the field of culture, such as writers dealing with LGBT topics and local cultural entities of any kind.
Describing my experience at and with Prole in a few words is not easy at all. Working in contact with professionals of culture – LGBT culture and not only – has made me say that I was on the right track to lay the first brick and build something positive and useful for a community in the future.