Business and Art Innovation Lab- BAIL

The one-week seminar was hosted by the EPHEC Center for International Relations. The other participating institutions were the Norwegian Academy of Music, CBS International Business School (Germany), Munster Technological University (Ireland), HU University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands) and Universidad CEU San Pablo (Spain). The project was interdisciplinary based on art, economics, and communication and generally how to navigate in the business not only as a musician but also as an entrepreneur.

The project also included two online sessions before the international group met at EPHEC University College in Brussels, Belgium on Monday 25th April. More than sixty students took part in the seminar, and we were challenged to be open and attentive to each other during a range of activities which took place from 9 am and continued for hours, even in the evenings. We were divided into groups by the staff members to ensure that we would new people and learn how to collaborate with a group we never met before.

The primary student task was to pitch and develop a prototype or a business idea in groups that had been organized by the BAIL staff before we met in Brussels. The group idea was developed during five intensive workdays and presented in plenary sessions on Friday 29thApril. Consequently, we got to know many of the students in a personal way and we got insight into their studies, culture, and everyday life.

The Business and Arts Innovation lab was created as an innovative intensive week project highlighting a broad perspective on values in society, the recognition of successes and failures of experiences entrepreneurship with sustainable impact, understanding the role of the arts and the unique competences of artists/creators in communication, co-operation, social support/impact and innovation, comfort with ambiguity when problem solving and, self-efficacy in creativity when taking on complex challenges.

We meet with a large team of teachers from eight different institutions in Europe. They presented various topics on business and culture activities and used different methods to mentor the groups through the various stages of the task, such as giving us opportunity to get professional feedback from people in the field, present the idea in front of a board of professors, introduce the idea to people on the streets of Brussels to create a survey and last but not least, create a big workshop where we would present the final idea to our fellow participants in a professional manner.

The project aimed at equipping the students with entrepreneurial, creative, and artistic skills to enhance our contextual competence and, to develop our practical and organizational skills so that we can function well in our society that is characterized by complex challenges in technology, business, education, and social life.

The main intention of the course was to promote understanding across national, political, and cultural borders.

By the end of the intensive training week, we got to learn things we originally didn’t expect. We learnt how to develop an idea from scratch, how to navigate through the development progress, what do we need to take into the account when we are creating any business projects and most importantly how to communicate with people on a professional level. Great part of the course was actually focused on how to have successful communication with people that have various backgrounds. But the most rewarding part of the course was that we had to step outside our comfort zone and collaborate on projects that might not be strictly music related. It gave us great insight into professional life as an entrepreneur.