RECHARGE Diary

On April 18-21, the 1st ACEI China Academic Forum and 4th China-Spain International Seminar on Cultural Economy and Policy took place at Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology (XAUAT) in Xi'an, China. The University of Valladolid (UVa) and Crentrum Cyfrowe Foundation (FCC), members of our consortium, attended to present the RECHARGE project.

The academic event was widely attended by researchers and students, as well as by members of Shangai Jiao Tong University, the Asian Studies Center (CEA) from the University of Valladolid, the Cultural Economics Research Group (GIEC/UVa) and the Association for Cultural Economics International (ACEI). A total of 20 ACEI members from Australia, Belgium, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, and Spain were in attendance, alongside many academics and research students from different Chinese institutions.

Natalia Cetera from centrum Cyfrowe and Fátima Espinosa from The University of Valladolid gave a presentation entitled Co-creating a sustainable future for museums through living labs strategy: approach and evaluation to introduce the attendees to our RECHARGE world.

The presentation was divided in two different parts: In the first one, Natalia Cetera presented the consortium and aim of the project, as well as introducing the definition of Cultural Participatory Business Models, the PCBM Canvas and the Living Labs methodology.

In the second part, Fátima Espinosa shared the results of the research about valuation on participation carried out in the past months, soon to be made available for our wider community to read. Our researchers obtained valuable feedback that will help to reinforce the robustness of our conclusions. 

This forum was also an incredible opportunity to enjoy other presentations that dealt with topics related to RECHARGE, such as the relation among cultural participation and life satisfaction in the paper: Life satisfaction and equal opportunities: is active involvement in arts only a matter for the most educated social layers? Presented by Romain Lerouge from Politecnico di Milano, Italy or the interactions, cooperations and social exchange among institutional stakeholders when organising a festival in the paper The festivalisation of Singapore Art Week: Tracing the attributes and variables determining the value of art festivals presented by Su-Fern from the Singapore Management University and National Arts Council, Singapore.

All in all, the first ACEI China Academic Forum has served the project in a double-way: not only did our partners spread RECHARGE but they also learnt what other academics are studying about our interesting topic.