The British Council and the British High Commission in Nicosia, in collaboration with Snook, a Glasgow-based digital innovation agency, and in partnership with Google, are hosting a Culture Shift Hackathon programme on 18th – 20th March, at the Capital Impact in Nicosia.
What is Culture Shift?
Since 2011, Culture Shift hackathons have been held all over the world – including Nigeria, Dubai, Athens and Egypt – helping motivate cultural economies across the globe. The model has a proven track record of stimulating innovation in the cultural sector worldwide.
A Culture Shift event is similar to a hack weekend; where business ideas are generated and tested over a short period of time by designers, developers, innovators, individuals and groups from the local cultural sector. We are aiming to develop a range of ideas and digital prototypes that solve or build on challenges regarding the cultural sector in Cyprus.
The event will be predominantly in English.
Does it cost anything?
The three-day event is free!
A weekend ticket covers your attendance for the entire event, from Friday to Sunday. The event will be held at Capital Impact, Nicosia.
When is it?
We are currently finalising the programme and will send updates soon, but the plan is to run Culture Shift Cyprus from Friday 18th March at 17:30 and finish with presentations on Sunday 20th March, starting at 15.00. Saturday and Sunday will both begin at 10am.
We have found that participants usually stay late on Friday and Saturday evenings to work on developing their concepts, but it is not mandatory to do so.
It is vital that you can attend all three days so please ensure that you are able to commit fully to the Culture Shift event.
Who will be there?
It is aimed at collaborative people who have skills in digital development, designers, entrepreneurs/innovators and individuals from the arts and cultural sector to work together over the weekend. If you are interested in attending, please sign-up.
To get the most out of the weekend it's important that we have a variety of participants with different skills and expertise attending. When selecting your ticket, please identify yourself as one of the following:
- Designer (product, service, graphic, web, UX, UI, systems, etc.)
- Developer (web development, software development, coding, app building, hardware hacking, data, etc.)
- Entrepreneur/Innovator (business development, strategy, marketing, etc.)
- Cultural sector (artists, producers, cultural venue managers, festival directors, heritage organisations, libraries, museums, etc.)
Tickets
There are limited spaces for the Culture Shift event and should the event be over-subscribed, we will have a waiting list. If you find your ticket type is sold out and you sign-up for another category, please be aware that it is likely we will have to re-allocate your ticket. It is important that we have a balanced mix of skills over the weekend, so please choose only the ticket type that is relevant for your knowledge/skill set.
Once you have reserved your ticket, you will be asked to complete a short form to allow us to review ticket holders and ensure that you skill set and ticket type are a match. It will take no longer than 5 minutes to complete. If the form is not completed we will need to re-allocate your ticket.
Tickets are allocated on a first-come-first-served basis – once the event is sold out, any tickets that become available will be allocated to those on the waiting list who are listed as the relevant ticket type. Please email the event organiser to be placed on a waiting list if your ticket type sells out.
What challenges will we be addressing?
We are looking for the challenge themes to be submitted by both the public and people within the arts sector, and to have an emphasis on how technology and social media platforms can be incorporated to support arts, culture and heritage in Cyprus.
You can submit challenges for the teams to potentially address during the event – what do challenges do you think the Cypriot cultural sector faces? We would love to know.
I can't make the entire event, can I still get involved?
If you can't make the event, we would still love for you to be involved!
You can follow the entire event on social media using the hashtag #CultureShiftCyprus
To kick-off the weekend, we are hosting a public Speaker event on Friday 18th March. Speakers are still TBC but we will have updates soon. The final presentations from our Culture Shift Cyprus teams will also be held on Sunday 20th March at 15.00. Tickets for both of these public events are available here.
Don't forget, you can also submit a challenge theme.
** Please note, if you are attending the Culture Shift Cyprus weekend, your weekend ticket INCLUDES your admission to the speaker event and to the presentation event too.**