The second online pilot of the Global FemArt Artists Circles from the 6th to the 17th of April 2020 was a new and highly stimulating challenge that resulted in a successful and fulfilling experience for the participants and the facilitator, exactly as the first face-to-face pilot. Due to the Covid 19 pandemic circumstances, Materahub decided to carry out the 3 sessions as online mentoring sessions with 6 enthusiastic female “artpreneurs” willing to internationalise their creative businesses.
These experimental online Circles sessions were unexpectedly engaging and productive for everyone lasting even more than 3 hours. As one of the participants’ stated, “The organisation and realisation of these online Circles sessions guaranteed the opportunity for each single participant to learn, improve, listen to their peers, compare their own entrepreneurial approach to those of other “artpreneurs”, exchange opinions, experiences and advice made the difference for the real success of the sessions.
The opportunity for the participants to share, discuss and revise their opinions, experiences, views and suggestions was the most highly productive outcome of the Circles as a whole and they were grateful for their peers’ inputs that contributed to implement their work.
The whole process worked very well in Italy, the online experimentation was very successful and the period of total standstill due to the pandemics created some favourable factors for the circles such as the greater predisposition of the participants to self-analysis and willing to improve, as well as the great desire for confrontation and dialogue.