KreNI is the first and most influential festival of creativity in southeastern Serbia, which brings together innovative creative professionals and experts from around the world with the idea of creating space for creative young people to develop the kind of society they want to live in. In the last eight years, during the conference, 40 ideas were developed by young people, which contribute to the improvement of the city of Nis with the use of tools of creative industries and digital technologies.
KreNI8 conference was opened by H.E. Yahel Vilan, Ambassador of Israel in Serbia, Mr. Roberto Cincotta, Director of the Italian Institute in Serbia, Ms. Monika Damnjanovic, Director of the French Institute in Nis and Snezana Andric, President of the Young Ambassadors.
#KreNI8 participants worked with nearly 30 experts from Italy, Sweden, Austria, France, Israel, Slovenia and Serbia, gained new knowledge and experience, shared their ideas with experienced mentors and developed solutions for creative development of our city. Workshops took place during the 2 days of the conference on the topics of Slow culture and Metaverse. On the third day they worked with mentors on developing their ideas, and on the last day of the conference, teams presented ideas to the jury and we have chosen the winning idea of the conference.
In the programs KreNI talks we had master classes on the topic of “Slow culture vs Metaverse” and we found out best practices from Italy, Sweden, Austria, Israel, France and Slovenia. Our speakers were: Gil Elnekave, Lecturer at Shenkar school of engineering and design (Israel) , Vanessa Trapani, Founder at Sloworking (Italy), Maximilian Prag, 3D Design at Sound:frame (Austria), Vincent Liegey, Interdisciplinary researcher on Degrowth (France), Ilkin Mehrabov, Senior lecturer at Lund University (Sweden) and Martin Petrič, Co-founder & Art Director at Charify.art web3 (Slovenia).
On the 26 November panel discussion “Slow culture meets Metaverse – Slovenian experience” was held where we talked about two different approaches, traveling continents by feet and living in the word of blockchain, and our participants were Tadej Slapnik, CEO at HashNET and Oliver Tic, hiker from Slovenia. Panel discussion „Slow culture meets Metaverse – Serbian experience“ was held on the 28 November. What is the potential of creative industries development and what challenges are facing creative workers in Serbia was an interesting discussion in which participated Martin Cuff, Advisor to Prime Minister for Creative Industries and Tourism, and strategist for the Serbia Create and Dimitrije Tadic, Head of Creative Europe Desk in Serbia.
KreNI8 teams have developed ideas that will contribute to harmonizing the world of Slow culture and Metaverse. Winning idea of #KreNI8 is “StepNI”, which is an application that measures steps a person is making during the day and that gives certain challenges. Based on the given challenges, users receive a discount when shopping in one of the partner stores, especially in sports equipment stores and bookstores.
This was another step in encouraging greater use of creative industries in the development of society, and in the coming period, together with partners, we will work on further development and implementation of KreNI8 ideas.