Many cities and regions around the world are facing radical environmental, social, political, and economic transformation, confronting challenges such as climate change, social injustice, the need for educational reform, and growing economic disparities. Addressing these challenges takes action at all levels and in collaboration across multiple different sectors.

Recognizing that some of the most imaginative solutions at the local and community levels are found in the arts and culture sector, where young cultural innovators are helping to drive change, Salzburg Global Seminar launched the Young Cultural Innovators Forum in 2014 to connect and empower a critical mass of talented change-makers across the world to shape a more creative, just and sustainable world.

Each year the YCI Forum brings together a new group of 50 cultural innovators and creative practitioners, selected from participating city or country “hubs” with the active support of local partner organizations. The artistic disciplines they represent range from the visual and performing arts, literature, and cultural heritage, to foods, fashion, architecture, and design. The residential program at Schloss Leopoldskron, home of Salzburg Global Seminar, is designed to help participants develop the dynamic vision, practical skills, and global networks they need to bridge divides, expand collaboration, and transform systems at the local, regional, and global levels.

Now in its sixth year, the YCI Forum is growing and nurturing a dynamic international network that catalyzes an expanding range of local and cross-border collaborations. The Forum represents a major, ten-year commitment by Salzburg Global Seminar to fostering creative innovation and social entrepreneurship for more inclusive and sustainable development. Focused on human capital and leadership development, the Forum aims to build a more vibrant and resilient culture and arts sector equipped to advance positive social change agendas and equitable community transformation worldwide.

PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Each annual YCI cohort comprises approximately ten expert facilitators and 50 young cultural innovators between the ages of 25 and 35 from around the world. Salzburg Global strives to have a group each year that is balanced in terms of gender, discipline, and geographic representation. Participants are chosen through a competitive application and nomination process, to ensure outstanding quality and diversity of professional knowledge and experience within the Forum.

Most participants come from “YCI hubs” that Salzburg Global Seminar has been developing with partners in cities and regions around the world. These hubs – which form the core of the YCI Forum’s activities – now include: Adelaide, Australia; Athens, Greece; Baltimore, USA; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Canada; Cape Town, South Africa; Detroit, USA; Malta; Manila, Philippines; Memphis, USA; Mekong Delta: Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand; Nairobi, Kenya; New Orleans, USA; Plovdiv, Bulgaria; Salzburg, Austria; Seoul, South Korea; Tirana, Albania; and Tokyo, Japan, and the Upper Midwest, USA.

Applications for funded scholarships for specific YCI Hubs will open on a rolling basis by hub throughout 2019. Sign up here to receive notification of when applications open: http://eepurl.com/dJ71CA

PROGRAM FORMAT

Forum components include the one-week annual program in Salzburg combining theory and praxis, with capacity building sessions focusing on:

• Communicating value;
• Principles of self-organization;
• Cross-sectoral collaboration;
• Leadership and values.

Outstanding participants from previous years are often invited back as facilitators, resource specialists or rapporteurs at later sessions and regional events to assure continuity, communication and exchange of best practice across the Forum.

The YCI Forum helps participants to create and develop hubs on all continents to share learning, scale up projects, and magnify the impact of the network created in Salzburg at the community and regional levels. YCI hub teams take the initiative to convene mini-sessions, workshops and public events and become a local resource for emerging cultural innovators working at the intersection of the arts and social impact.

EXPECTED OUTCOMES AND IMPACT

Through the annual week-long program in Salzburg and ongoing network facilitation, the Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators aims to:

• Support next generation creative change-makers who are major, yet unrecognized or under-resourced, drivers of civic innovation and imaginative social change;
• Create a world-class network of Young Cultural Innovators to strengthen and encourage cross-sectoral collaboration between the arts sector and other sectors over the next five years;
• Build the capacity of a critical mass (500+) of networked young creative change-makers committed to innovative leadership, social impact, entrepreneurial approaches, and exchange of best practices within and among “YCI hubs” worldwide;
• Generate a multiplier effect through the “YCI hubs” by sharing the learning from the Salzburg sessions and inspire innovation, collaboration, and peer mentoring at the local and regional levels; and
• Disseminate the Forum’s groundbreaking ideas around the intersection between the arts and social impact to a broad community of stakeholders and build a creative impact network for continuing dialogue, collaboration and advocacy, through social media and catalyzed by the “YCI hubs.”

Applications for the YCI Forum 2019 are now closed. 

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All photos are available to publish under the Creative Commons license - Attribution/Non-commercial. Photos should be credited to Salzburg Global Seminar/Herman Seidl

Hi-res, non-watermarked photos are available from the Communications Team, press@salzburgglobal.org