Dragana Jevtić - Director and Founder ([email protected])
Katarina Mitić Minić - Programme Manager ([email protected])
keywords: mentorship, music, support, mentor, mentee
This presentation explores how informal education and a mentoring approach can foster the development of original and sustainable musical ideas, positively impacting various aspects and the formation of sustainable musical cultures and communities. We will use The Bridge mentorship program as a case study, highlighting how participants in the programme have developed relevant ideas and projects with the support of their mentors. By sharing their experiences, we will underscore why mentoring is an effective tool and form of support and education for personal and professional development in this context. Although the participants of the mentorship program are music PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, the fact that the program is non-academic and that mentors and mentees match across various sectors significantly contributes to providing mentees with a new perspective and dimension.
The Bridge mentorship program is implemented by Creative Mentorship as part of the Erasmus+ project Music4Change. Creative Mentorship is an independent, non-profit, and non-governmental civil society organization that, for the past 13 years, has been developing and implementing mentoring and capacity-building programs for professionals in the fields of arts, culture, creative industries, and media in Serbia and across Europe. For more than a decade, Creative Mentorship has been building, gathering, and supporting a community of motivated and socially responsible individuals who contribute to the development of a society based on creativity, culture, knowledge, and mutual cooperation.
Dragana Jevtić is the founder and director of Creative Mentorship, an independent and nonprofit civil society organization which for the past 10 years develops and implements mentoring programs for professionals and future professionals in the field of arts, culture, creative industry and media in Serbia and across Europe. She is in charge of strategic vision, legal, financial and operational aspects, as well as the development of new partnerships and mentorship program/s.
Besides running Creative Mentorship, in order to share her passion for mentorship further, from 2021 to 2023 Dragana was also engaged as Senior Mentoring Consultant for Media for All, a large regional capacity building project for independent media outlets in the Western Balkan countries run by the British Council. In this project she was in charge of developing and implementing 3 cycles of mentorship programs for women in media in the Western Balkans.
In Erasmus+ projects REMAM - Reinventing Mentorship in Arts Management and Music4Change she is overseeing Creative Mentorship’s engagement in sharing expertise on mentorship, and in Creative Europe project CC4WBs - Culture and Creativity for the Western Balkans she is together with the Creative Mentorship team running two mentorship programs for creative leaders and young leaders.