"Our platform has supported thousands of cultural actors across five countries"

The Georgian Research and Educational Networking Association, GRENA, was the lead partner in the Culture Exchange Platform (CULTUR-EXP) project, funded by the European Union’s Black Sea Basin Joint Operational Programme. The overall objective of the project was to enable the cross-border exchange of culture by providing an innovative online platform adapted for culture producers (artists), cultural operators (museums, festivals, etc.) and other actors in the culture market.

I would like to mention the fruitful cooperation between all partners of the project. This was an important task taking into account that partners from Armenia, Bulgaria and Greece are mainly culture oriented and partner organisations from Georgia and Moldova are working in information technologies.

The main challenge for the project team was to attract a critical mass of users and information that will make the platform sustainable. For this reason, an intensive campaign of disseminating the CULTUR-EXP platform at national and international events took place. Also, the database of cultural producers, operators, artists and cultural events was created and used in all 5 partner countries with information including more than 3500 organizations and individuals. As a result of this activity, the increase of cooperation between representatives of culture from different countries was observed. It was interesting to see how art and culture in the region is starting to use information technology for the promotion and planning of their work.

Biography

Prof. Dr. Ramaz Kvatadze graduated from the Moscow State University and conducted his research in high-energy physics at several leading scientific centres in Russia, Denmark, Switzerland and France. In 1982 he obtained his Ph.D and in 1996 Doctor of Science degree in Physics. From 1996–2001 he was Deputy Director of the High Energy Physics Institute of the Tbilisi State University. Since 1999, Prof. Dr. Kvatadze has been Executive Director of the Georgian Research and Educational Networking Association, GRENA. He was team leader in 16 European Commission projects, 14 NATO Science for Peace and Security Programmes and other projects. Prof. Dr. Kvatadze is co-author of 115 publications.