After twelve years of activities, we have to say goodbye to Culture Agora, a free platform to find and publish info, videos and live streaming content related to the cultural and creative industries, in the EU & Med countries. Here is a farewell message from CUMEDIAE's CEO, Ignasi Guardans.
"It all started when I was looking for a summer dance course. Too much online information under such a title in a search. Useless. Frustrating effort. And then, one simple idea: why couldn’t we replicate in a way or another the basic structure of those online portals used to search for apartments or offices, and apply that to the needs of all those interested in the cultural sector? Jobs, funding, training…
The project of Culture Agora was born. Many, many hours of brainstorming and work followed, trying to put together a coherent structure. A bit like organizing the catalogue of a full library… before purchasing its first book. And we had to make it usable, practical. Automatic translation was only at its infancy, so we decided to make it automatically accessible in several languages. That was one more challenge we decided to assume.
Twelve years later, the time has come to put that beautiful adventure to a halt. That is, after hosting thousands of relevant posts shared with us (or better, entrusted to us for its dissemination) by hundreds of cultural players from across Europe and the Southern Mediterranean. The need for cleaner and clearer cross-border and cross-sectoral information for cultural actors and practitioners of all kinds is as relevant today as ever before. But we must always adapt to the reality: 2023 was the year of the explosion of Artificial Intelligence. That is a fundamental game changer in many areas of life for anyone ready to use it and to extract from it all its potential. And that includes a profound, radical transformation in the search and management of online information.
People say that a year in a dog’s life corresponds to seven years in human life. Well: twelve years is an eternity for a project in the digital environment.
We are very proud of what we have achieved, and very thankful to all those who have supported us along the years. As “The End” message appears on our screen, it would be the moment where a list of credits pays tribute to the large number of people who made Culture Agora possible along these years. But there is no space for that. So, I will only mention three people who were there at the very beginning, with their time, their passion and their clever advice : Cristina, Carla, and Mireia. A public thank you to them, and of course also to a large number of other passionate and clever collaborators, mostly within the CUMEDIAE team, who have helped made this the success it has been.
And now, let’s prepare for new adventures and challenges!
Ignasi Guardans CEO, CUMEDIAE"
