Group reflection
Museum of Arts and Crafts
As a part of the ArtistSchool program, we visited the museum of Arts and Crafts. Considered one of the oldest technical and industrial museums in the world, the history of the Museum of Arts and Crafts is thus intimately linked to that of the Cnam, of which it has been an inseparable component since its creation more than 200 years ago. We saw there 7 sections — scientific instruments, materials, construction, communication, energy, mechanics and transport. The visit begins with the Scientific Instruments (weighing, observing the stars, measuring distances, calculating, etc.) and allows us to travel through history from the “Pascaline”, the first calculating machine invented by Pascal to the Cray supercomputer. But what inspired me the most was the old musical instruments. At the “materials” gallery, we are almost at the end of the museum. What we saw was a much more incredible thing. With our group, we saw a reproduction of a 6-wheeled lunar robot and a squirrel robot, responsible for exploring the inhospitable areas of nuclear power plants.
Almost every participant of Spring School would agree that creative movement workshops with Caitlan Maggs were unique, extraordinary, and unforgettable. During those workshops, we worked individually and in groups to seek the best results. We had an opportunity to express ourselves, our emotions, and our feelings through movement. During the first workshop, almost all activities were in groups but while we danced in groups we had to repeat the movements of the group leaders. We noticed that while others are boldly moving forward to be leaders, others are stepping back so as not to be noticed. It was also noticeable that some leaders observed the team and tried to use not-so-complicated, basic moves that everybody would be able to do them while other leaders used more advanced movements and only a few people from the group were able to do them right. During the second workshop, we created a dance performance from the first steps until it became a little show. First of all, every person had to create his own short multi-step dance, after that we had to connect this movement with another person’s dance and create an even longer dance. Finally, we combined four different people’s movements to one dance. It was not easy, since every person came up with different ideas on how we should do the dance, begging from the music and ending with steps order. Nevertheless, all the performances were so great, unique and exceptional, it was interesting to see that the performance of each group is absolutely different from the previous one. The most important things we took from these workshops are creativity, teamwork, collaboration, leadership, and good communication. In our opinion, these things are indispensable in both innovations and the creative industry so improving these skills is especially important.
As a part of the ArtistSchool program, we visited LINCC incubator. This is the innovation platform dedicated to digital, cultural, and creative industries. It is an integral part of the ecosystem bringing together all major groups: startups and expert institutions. The organization supports the growth of young innovative companies in the field of cultural and creative industries. They also accelerate the transformation of innovation into business and identify opportunities for collaboration. LINCC structure and facilitate the meeting between startups and large companies within a dedicated place.
Thi place was especially interesting to me as I work in an organization that does some of the functions of the incubator. The first and the biggest surprise for me was that the LINCC incubator it run only by 3 people. Our organization is run by 20 people. LINCC has outsourced all infrastructure-related activities to another firm which makes them focus on the startups. Our organization on the other hand spends a lot of time dealing with infrastructure-related tasks which is a huge overhead. While we offer one of the cheapest infrastructures for the startups in town in addition to a 3-year incubation program we still struggle to fill all the empty space we have to rent. Part of the problem is the current post-pandemic situation as well as the uncertainty due to the war, however, my understanding is that a good incubator always has to have a waiting list of the startups which want to get in and work along with the best of the best. I will try to implement some of the best practices of the LINCC incubator at my organization.
The quality of the startups at LINCC also has left me impressed. It’s like I have revisited Silicon Valley again. We have met the creators of the virtual Mona Lisa AI app and a game developer who have been featured on the Apple App Store. This is truly impressive and motivates me to work harder so we have similar examples in our ecosystem.
Musee des Arts Forains SpringSchool visited was a true inspiration.
Musee des Arts Forains we visited was an inspiring and very fun experience. The extremely charismatic guide showed us around letting us to play old-school french games, to feel azartic cheering for our team, to try out every object of museum and feel the vibe itself. We sang songs of Edith Piaf on the Mary go Round which unified us and created a very french atmosphere. We had an amazing opportunity to use our dance skills gained during the week on museum, dancing in a big circle as a Spring School family. Each room of museum with an unique history, let us encourage different skills of ours: teamwork, support, coordination combined with laugh and happiness. Museum helped us to gain useful relationships, friendships that still last and bond with local team and lecturers.
