About
Community Bootcamp was a 5-day long mentoring program for leaders and members of communities, associations, and initiatives. It consisted of a series of full-day workshops full of tailor-made education and training. Participants had the opportunity to gain new contacts and valuable feedback from international experts with rich experience managing coworking centers and crowdfunding.
Structure
During 5 days, mentors provided the participants with valuable information, concrete examples from practice, and useful tools for working with communities, clubs, and groups. More precisely, how to build, co-create, or manage them, how to maintain them, how to communicate appropriately internally and externally, and how to get the finances for your dream activities.
A very important part of the program was mentoring and the participants were given time to go over their personal goals and plans. Even after Community Bootcamp finished, mentors continued to help them with evaluating their growth, activities, and decisions.
Mentors
Tânia Santos (Porto, Portugal)
Tânia is an expert in creative hubs and community building. She is the founder of CRU Cowork. She is also the coordinator of the most important street market in Porto. Tânia studied psychology, economics, and innovation management, and her main interests are entrepreneurship, creative business development, human-centered design, collaborative work, and creative economy. Since 2018, Tânia is an interim steering committee member of the European Creative Hubs Network and a consultant in the European Development Institute.
Luka Piškorič (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Luka has been working as a producer and consultant in cultural and creative industries for over 20 years. He co-founded Slovenia Coworking and Slovenia Crowdfunding initiatives to build creative communities and help them get funding. His activities have naturally led to the foundation of Poligon Creative Center – an autonomous space for independent professionals, communities, and start-ups. He is one of the founding members of the Cultural Policy Designers Network. He facilitates workshops on co-working, crowdfunding community building, and audience development.
Target group
Community Bootcamp was created for leaders and members of communities, groups of people, associations, or initiatives that are already functioning or just being formed. They could be working in design, IT, co-working, gaming, media art, dance, education, business, music, illustration, marketing, startups.
The program was supported using public funding by the Slovak Arts Council.
Past years
Lukáš leads classes focused on the general development of our movements. During the class, movements cannot be categorized as strength training, mobility, coordination, dance, or meditation. During the program, he wanted to meet new people and create opportunities for future collaboration. Read more about him and his community in this article.
Alica joined Community Bootcamp to build a community that focuses on connecting mental health with creativity. She named it Mental – as in ‘mental illness,’ ‘health’ or ‘care.’ After the program, she wanted to create a visual identity for her community and look for space in Bratislava where people can come anytime and feel safe. Read more about her in this article.
The East Slovak Gallery (ESG) already has its own community focused on visual arts, and it keeps growing. She appreciated that the program gave her an external perspective on their project since the international mentors look at Košice impartially. Often, what seems invisible to us is visible to them. Read more about the ESG community in this article.
Tabačka Kulturfabrik is a multifunctional cultural center where a wide range of communities meets. For now, their goal is to clarify which communities need their support most and how they should provide it to them. Read more about it in this article.
Matúš works as the project manager of SPOTS, which improves life in Košice neighborhoods. He represents a wider range of communities. During Community Bootcamp, he found the information on funding very useful as this is a hot topic for SPOTS. Read more about the community around SPOTS in this article.
According to Ľubica, the role of the Košice UX community is to connect professional designers with people who would like to gain experience in this field. Community Bootcamp has brought communication to the forefront. She now realizes how important it is to communicate with each other and through social networks. Read more about the UX community in Košice in this article.
Peter is a 3D designer in architecture, working freelance in Michalovce to establish a coworking community. He wants people from the creative industry and young entrepreneurs to join it. Read more about it in this article.
Zuzana is active in several communities. She is part of Spolka, and she is a Ph.D. student at the Technical University of Košice. These communities mainly provide a floor for open discussions. Read more about their community in this article.
Veronika represented the regional organization Visit Košice, which wants to create a community with its members, visitors, and tourists. This community already exists formally in the form of a tourism cluster. Read more in this article.
At the Community Bootcamp, Peter represented the civic association Vita in suburbium, which returns life to the premises of the Jewish ritual buildings in Bardejov, Slovakia. The program was beneficial for him because he sorted through his ideas and systematically laid down the basic steps to proceed in their project systematically. Read about it in this article.
