Giorgia Gandolfini

Giorgia Gandolfini, class of 2015, is the founder of the Artist Partners, an arts organization funded in 2018 that connects contemporary visual artists and corporate organizations. It was the result of Giorgia’s two main work experiences, interning for well-known artist residency programs, Residency Unlimited in New York, and CAREOF in Milan, and working for a digital marketing agency, and learning about the needs of a corporate organization. Although the Artist Partners is her main project, Giorgia collaborates with organizations in the arts and the marketing sector. Starting this September, she will also work as the program manager for Asset One, a contemporary art organization based in Milan. 

In our interview, Giorgia talked about the Artist Partners’ mission of “creating a bridge between artists and organizations”. As she described, it joins “artistic practices and researchers with the needs of HR managers”, particularly in the Learning and Development department and uses participatory practices to develop soft skills, like creativity, innovation, and interpersonal communication. One of the first projects launched by Artist partners was a collaboration between UBI Banca, a nationwide bank, and the artist Marinella Senatore. The two-day project focused on building empathy through dancing between people that did not know each other. The projects that followed include the collaboration between the CLAMDA program at the University of Bologna and the artist Roberto Fassone on creativity and innovative ideas, and a two-hour workshop with children on intercultural communication. However, because of the pandemic the organization began to focus more on digital workshops, especially for children, as this audience was overlooked by authorities. Giorgia also talked about the future plans of the organization, which included training workshops for both children and adults on the topic of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math), as she summed it “joining the scientific culture with arts and culture”.  

What are the misconceptions about artistic research and contemporary arts that you want to correct as an arts manager? 

One of the issues we are trying to address is that of professionalism in the art world. Artists are still seen as magical creatures floating in the sky. They wake up, they invent something beautiful and they go out in the world with this something beautiful. But it's not really like that, especially today, if you want to be a professional artist, you really have to have some credentials. You have to attend specific schools, universities, or institutes. You have to maybe engage in a number of artist residencies, or a number of exhibitions with specific arts institutions, preferably at an international level. Otherwise, you won't be recognized by your peers inside the art world. So, this is very important to know. Because artists that manage to be recognized as professionals have an entrepreneurial approach to their work and they have specific skills that can be easily transferred also to the corporate environment. And so, our main issue with the work of the Artist Partners is that of making people on the outside understand that artists are real 100% professionals. And they have skills that can be also applied to our everyday life and their approach is just a different one. They are trained in a different way, with a different approach. This kind of difference can only help other professionals from other industries to find new solutions or new approaches. So, it should be an exchange on the same level, but right now it still seems an exchange not along peers on the same level. Because managers from banks are still seeing artists as magical creatures, but they are not, they are real professionals. And sometimes they are also trained to span across different professional categories and manage to survive in a much tougher world than the corporate one is. Because, especially in Italy, this kind of industry is not structured at all, so you really have to work really hard in order to thrive. So, this is the first issue, and the second one is that, when we are proposing our projects, art is still seen as extremely fascinating, contemporary art is a very fascinating, magical thing. It is not taken seriously, but it is something sparkly, not really of this everyday life, and also this is something that I would really like to change. I am not saying that art is something that should be taken seriously, and we should be sad, and seriously going to art exhibitions and focus with our brain completely on the work of art that we have in front of us. But I want to make people understand that art is just a different way of expressing our reality, and is not just “I wake up, I go to work, and I go to bed after that”. It's definitely part of our way of seeing life, it's just like reading a book, and it’s a serious thing.  

Why did you choose freelancing and doing a start-up, as opposed to working for one institution? 

 The main reason why is very simple: especially in Italy, there is no structure in the arts industry. So, it's not like, you want to work in marketing and you just go to a marketing agency and you send your resume and you just get hired. It doesn't work like that. There is a lot of competition and few organizations, with no money at all, so it's a project-based industry. I’m sure you have been studying this during the GIOCA program. And, since it's a project-based industry, you have to work on a project basis. So, it's very difficult to just get hired by a singular organization, because they do not have enough resources in order to do that. And a lot of people want to work in this specific industry. When I first came back to Italy, I wanted to work for a specific institution, but no one was hiring me. And I got a lot of job offers, which were not really job offers, because they weren't paying me.  But everyone wanted to work with me, because I had international experience, and I came from NY, and I have a good approach. And I was thinking, then I was going to change the industry, I don't want to work in the arts anymore. Because I want to be an adult, I want to be self-sustainable, I don't want to ask for money to my parents anymore. After a little bit of like thinking, I realized that it doesn't work like that. Again, especially here in Italy, if I wanted to work in this specific industry, I had to work in the way the industry works.  That is why I chose to be a freelancer in this industry. Also, the opportunity to create my own organization had more reasons behind that. First of all, it allowed me to re-enter the industry with relevant context, connections, and also contents. And also, it allowed me to start working again in that industry, because I was out, I had been out for a couple of years. And I wasn't just the person that was sending my resume, but I had my own projects. I had the credibility, and so I started again creating more contents out of this single project, the Artist Partners. That is basically how I then started working with this organization that I am going to work with in a more stable way in September. 

Do you have tips or tricks on freelancing? 

The main thing is networking. It's the most important thing that you should be doing, and I’m not saying networking in a cynical way, just go out and get as many business cards as you can. But, in my experience, what is very important is just network in a significant way, with people that you can really connect with, and that you think you have a real connection with. So not just someone that you think might be useful for your job, but someone that you can start a real conversation, that you feel that you have something in common with. Because those are the people that you are going to connect also on the long term. So, for instance, when I was working in Milan, for the first time, in this artist residency, it wasn't really a good experience, at first. And there were just a couple of people that I really connected with and I worked really well with. When I was connecting with those couple of people, I wasn't really thinking, "Oh, I'm going to do networking and so on “. I was just connecting with them. And after a couple of years, I got this new idea, and I just got back in touch with them and I had a good feeling with them. They were former colleagues, but also kind of friends, or just people that I really had a good feeling with. And it worked out because it was something more than a professional connection. This is something that paid out really well for me, just creating connections that are deeper than just professional ones. And something else is, well definitely you have to start doing something, somewhere, even if you have to take the risk of not being perfect or excellent at what you are doing in that specific moment. When we started doing the Artist Partners, of course we had similar experiences with projects working in between the corporate world and the art world. So, in the past we did already something, which was not structure as well as the Artist Partners is, we were kind of experienced, but we did with a slightly different approach working with HR managers. So, we weren't really prepared, and we couldn't really get ready for that real-life experience. I've studied a lot, but, as much as I could study it didn't really match with the real experience. So, if you want to do something, you just have to start from somewhere and do that. Theory is helpful, but it's just on the same level with practical experience. And, I think it's a very important thing to take advantage of the experience that GIOCA gives you of connecting and thinking internationally. Because that is also something that really paid up well for me. For instance, just always keep in mind that there is a larger world than what you see. And this is especially important right now, with the COVID-19 emergency. Since now we have to stay home, we can't really travel. But it's very important to keep on thinking that you connected with people at an international level, and you can still do that. And there are people out there doing something similar I think can give you a different perspective on what you do, so I think that is also very important to keep your creative thinking going. 

About your time at GIOCA, was there a class or an assignment you had that really had an impact on you? 

I remember the project management class, because we had the opportunity to do a real, live project, and I think that that project really mirrored more or less what I really liked doing, which is working at the side of artists producing an artwork. So, for this project management class we commissioned a mural artwork to a young artist working in the local art academy. We selected him through an open call, and we commissioned him this mural artwork inside of an interdisciplinary cultural center in Bologna. And I think this is a micro experiment of then what I started doing, working at the side of young or emerging artists, working for nonprofit space, or working inside the nonprofit contemporary art industry in the production or in the promotion of the contemporary arts section. We were super inexperienced, we were like managing everything on the go, and it was really good. And I was also really afraid that everything didn't work. It's nice to think about that in retrospective, because it was like a really small project with one artist and in a very small cultural center, and we had, like 20 guests, so it was really small. And I was really afraid that anything would turn out really bad, and then I learned that it was just like a very small thing, but I had to learn to be more relaxed and just enjoy things. So, it was it was really nice, and I think, in general, since it is a management program, GIOCA has to give you more and more experience in terms of real life and how things in real life work. And just connect you with a number of organizations working with in real life. It wouldn't make any sense just to stay in your classroom and study. 

I think you kind of mentioned this, the international environment. Do you want to add something to that idea? 

That side was one of the main reasons why, at first, I applied to the program. Because I just came back from my Erasmus exchange program during my bachelor’s degree and I wanted to keep that kind of atmosphere. So, I had two options, I want to keep studying in Germany, because that is where I did my Erasmus exchange program, or I wanted to keep on studying in an international master’s program. And that is firstly one of the main reasons I applied to the program. Then of course, living every day within an international community, it was great, and it definitely kept me in that mind set. It really helped me, solidifying that kind of mindset of thinking internationally and always appreciating the different kinds of cultural perspectives. 

We are at the end of the interview, is there anything else you would like to add?  

I wanted to talk about this one experience that I had, referring to my professional approach. We talked about how much the experience that I had in the US was important for me in terms of my professional approach. There I really learned some of the pillars that I keep on adopting in my approach, which is basically: be brave, act fast and act with empathy, and connect with people. And again, something that I stressed already with you, it's act with kindness and empathy because everything that you put out there will come back to you. That is especially true when you work in the arts industry since it is mostly based on the ability of relating to other people. We are not engineers or architects, we need to know a couple of tricks, but we don't really need to have specific technical skills that can be put out there in the market. We only have our ability to interact with people and communicate our ideas to people. And of course, also be realistic, because, you know  when you are in a program such as GIOCA, you are very idealistic and you think "Oh, I will go out there in the world and do my project" and then you clash with reality and nobody is listening to you and nobody wants to pay you. So, one of the main things that you have to keep in mind is be realistic, be brave and have your ideas, but you have to also be flexible and be prepared that sometimes things just don't work out. For instance, here in Italy, we don't have enough resources to do everything that you might have in mind so you have to adjust to reality and see what is sustainable or not and be ready to change your plans. See what the market is asking in terms of skills, like fundraising is something that is still going really strong or marketing and communication. You can also think about taking a specific direction and then changing and seeing if that works out or not because we still have to pay rent. 

Interview carried out by Silvia Vasilescu