Train 24 global artists for Edinburgh Festivals

First of all very many thanks to all of you who helped us reach our target f £2,000 from at least 50 separate donors. We are now permanently on the Global Giving site and are very excited about how we move forward.

Your donation has helped us take the first steps on our ambitious project which helps artists in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific get their works seen across the world and trains them to be able to work with international promoters.  We know that the talent is their but the contacts and skills are not always of the same standard. Our project will give them the tools and the training to increase their income by accessing international markets. Making them and their families more self-sufficient and able to thrive from their work and creativity.

We are doing this by:

1.Creating a website specifically for the cultural sector - World Cultures Connect. Since November we have created this and launched it at the beginning of January.  Along with our own directories there are already over 2,000 artists and promoters on the site.

2. Marketing the site to the artists and promoters - we have sent out the link via our newsletter of 10,000 subscribers and within the first hour we had 11 new profiles on the site and it has been growing rapidly since.

3. Going on promotional visits – since November we have done two – one Fiji and one to New York.

In Fiji we met our partners and many, many congratulations to our partner Letila Mitchell who gave birth to a healthy baby girl just last week.

When we were there, the British High Commissioner hosted a reception to launch the project and we also appointed a link person to work on the project there, on the ground, Ebonie Fifita.

The next phase of the project is to train the artists in how to use the website and also to create other training workshops.  To make sure these are relevant to local needs, we have conducted a survey asking artists what they do now internationally, what they would like to do and what is stopping them. We have just analysed this survey and will be working on tailor made workshops to deliver soon.

The money we raised will help us get up to 2,000 more artists onto the website and we are now going out to raise more funds to make the workshops as good as we can make them and to reach more people. We really look forward to working with you and future colleagues on making this project a success.