Tbilisi Academy of Arts to launch business incubator for its students

A brand-new initiative in Georgia’s capital is launching a business incubator at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts to help the state institution’s students develop their projects and learn skills for promoting their work.

Starting in October, aspiring artists enrolling at the academy, a long-standing principal state venue for arts, will also be trained in how to make their artwork and projects attractive on the contemporary international scene.

In bachelor’s and master’s degree courses at the academy, which recently underwent major renovation work, students will be taught entrepreneurship, culture marketing and arts management.

In the doctoral programmes at the institution, these professions and fields will be analysed in seminars for those working on PhD projects.

Trainers for UpStart, the project of the incubator, will be prepared by invited professionals from the United Kingdom. The UpStart project is a winner of Creative Spark, a grant contest of the British Council in Georgia.

Mikheil Giorgadze, Deputy Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of Georgia, told students at an unveiling of the project earlier today he hoped the education received at the incubator would help them “help other people and create jobs” beside gaining direct benefits with new skills.

The launch of the business incubator at the academy is the first major initiative for developing skills for promoting artwork at the institution which has traditionally focused on purely creative education.

Rector Giorgi Gugushvili said UpStart would seek to help artists “avoid getting lost” in the reality of global markets, innovation and technology after graduating.

Beside the academy the UpStart project is supported by Creative Georgia, a local agency established in an effort to develop creative industries in the country, as well as its international counterparts Advantage Creative and Creative Solutions.