External expertise open call for “AWAKE: Arts & Wellbeing as a Creative Business and Future Livelihood” project
In the framework of the project “AWAKE: Arts & Wellbeing as a Creative Business and Future Livelihood”, the lead partner — the Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture — is seeking an external expert to create a casebook on Arts & Wellbeing (A&W) practices.
The “AWAKE: Arts & Wellbeing as a Creative Business and Future Livelihood” project explores the intersection of arts and wellbeing from the perspective of creative businesses and future livelihoods. By emphasising emerging collaborative practices between arts and wellbeing, the project will provide valuable educational material (a casebook of business models), training opportunities (workshops), and facilitate insightful and diverse round table discussions.
The project aims to create avenues for entrepreneurial ventures and business prospects within the dynamic field of Arts & Wellbeing. The Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture is leading the project, which will run from November 2023 to October 2025 and is co-financed by Creative Europe. You can read more about the project and its partners here.
Scope of work
The casebook is expected to contribute to the discussion of A&W as a way of living for cultural professionals and demonstrate the importance of relevant entrepreneurial approaches. The publication will serve as a stepping stone to further explore ways A&W activities can be developed and discussed from the perspective of business models and entrepreneurial practices that generate revenue. The casebook can be utilised in various contexts by providing practical case studies of A&W cases that build on proven business logic. The cases presented should be best-practice examples that already have a track record in building scalable A&W products, services, and approaches. Furthermore, the presented case studies should clearly distinguish themselves from the typical financial logic of A&W activities, which often rely on cultural grants, subsidies, philanthropic gestures, or hybrid modalities, such as crowdfunding. The audience of the casebook includes A&W practitioners and newcomers in this sector, for whom the casebook will provide inspirational approaches to the entrepreneurial possibilities of the A&W sector. Additionally, the casebook is intended for institutions that train arts and cultural professionals to work in A&W and can serve as a resource for professionals in the health sector who consume and enable A&W products and services. For this audience, the casebook should function as a dependable source of professional A&W cases, offering scalability.
Outcome
The expected outcome is an online publication that will be shared as a PDF. The publication should consist of five case studies — presented as fact boxes, business model visualisations, and texts that build on author interviews, discussing the core idea of the product/service and its business logic. Each case study should also include a brief input from a customer of the product (e.g., a health sector professional). The publication should include a foreword and a summary of the conclusions and have a total length of approximately 30 pages, including illustrations.
The casebook will be edited by native English speakers and a summary will also be available in French. We expect the book to be downloaded between 200 and 500 times.
Tasks
- In collaboration with the project team, define basic criteria for the case studies
- Benchmark work and screen potential cases — with a minimum of 15 cases representing a wide range of EU countries
- In collaboration with the project team, choose five cases to further explore in the casebook
- Define interview questions and determine the level of data required
- Conduct online interviews with the chosen five A&W practitioners
- Conduct brief interviews with the five A&W practitioners’ clients to include the consumer perspective
- Transcribe the interviews
- Write and edit the casebook text according to the conditions outlined by the project team
- Cooperate with the proofreader and designer
- Present the finalized casebook to the project team and wider audiences
What kind of expert(s) are we looking for?
We are looking for an expert, or team of experts, with experience in creative business environments and conveying information in engaging online materials and publications.
The expert(s) should have:
- Knowledge of the cultural and creative entrepreneurial fields
- Experience in processing information (conducting research and presenting findings in an engaging manner), writing publications (journalistic articles, blog posts, etc., — not necessarily academic work), and editing outcomes in reference to the task
- The ability to analyse large amounts of information
- The ability to translate and convey information to diverse audiences in an engaging, simple, yet accurate manner
- The ability to work independently and proactively while adhering to deadlines
- Experience in collaborating with others and maintaining flexibility when working with commissioners
- A good eye for business perspectives without prejudice against differing approaches or creative solutions
- Experience in the A&W sector is considered advantageous
What we offer
A total gross fee of up to EUR 6500 (six thousand five hundred euros and zero cents), including all applicable tax and VAT.
The project team will support the expert(s) work process with guidance, knowledge, and insights of A&W cooperations, and some sources of information to consider in the benchmarking of potential cases. The project team will facilitate the casebook design and final proofread. They can also provide an introduction to the publication and additional commentary, if necessary.
Timeline
We expect a draft of the casebook to be ready by November 2024 with the intention of publishing the final version in spring 2025 (TBC).
Criteria
The expert(s) will be selected according to their profile, the quality of their proposal, and their financial offer. During the selection process, we will be looking for the following qualities:
- Work experience related to performing previous tasks similar to this call
- References to published works similar to this call
- Existing knowledge and networks within the cultural and creative sectors — especially in the field of Arts & Wellbeing
- Motivation and interest in the work
- Fluency in English, both written and spoken
- A proposed work plan and timeline for completing the work
Proposal submission
In your proposal, please approximate how long you foresee each task taking and elaborate on how you meet the above criteria. If applicable, please add VAT and other tax requirements.
All proposals must be received by 24th April 2024, at the latest. Please email your proposal as a PDF to kate@ndpculture.org.
The “AWAKE: Arts & Wellbeing as a Creative Business and Future Livelihood” project is co-funded by the European Union.
