Second Group Meeting Minutes


The second STEERING GROUP MEETING of CerDee was held on 27 to 29 of May 2020. Due to the COVID-19 situation the meeting needed to be switched to an online webinar. 24 persons from all partners the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza (IT), Muzeum Ceramiki w Bolesławcu, New Design University St. Pölten, Narodni Muzej Slovenije, Porzellanikon –Staatliches Museum für Porzellen in Hohenberg a. d. Eger /Selb, Technical University Ilmenau, Západočeská univerzita v Plzni, and Zavod zu turizem in kultro Kranjas and Euregio Egrensis, Bavaria as well as a representative of one associated partner took part.

The meeting started with introducing the new director of Porzellanikon, Anna Dziwetzki and her welcoming words to all participants. The meeting was again split into the work package thematic, where the partners reviewed the progress and discuss further activities of the project.

UWB presented the overview of results of WP T1. Output of WP 1 was the desk research analysis of every country. One result of the desk research of WP T1 is, the most enterprises are situated in Italy, Czech Republic and Germany. The production value is the highest in Germany followed by Italy and Poland. In the design sector around 38% out of all enterprises are in the EU. 67% of enterprises are businesses with a very long tradition. However, we expect dramatically changes of business after the COVID-19 pandemics will end. The main needs for enterprises is to have further education and training on modern techniques, IT-skills and also online and social media marketing. From young students around 17% thinking about starting their own business (fully or partially), and will need some more knowledge and skills especially in marketing. It needs to be reflected that this information was gathered before the COVID-19 pandemics, so the conditions will change immensely in the future. Next step is to compile the stakeholder map. It will be an interactive map, where users can search in categories like, name, type of institutions, address, city, contact person etc.

The National Museum of Slovenia, who leads WP T2 started the activities of this work package with a short survey in Slovenia to learn more about the needs and wishes of the CCIs related to any possible online publications of archive materials within CerDee. According to the presented results the partners aligned their further work. Besides, the partner museums are asked to research any suitable materials from their own collections while the University partners are called to continue the survey at their institutions.

MIC Faenza, leader of WP T3 presented together with their associated partner ISIA Faenza the first workshop for CCIs which will be held in summer 2020 at ISIA Faenza. In addition, the further procedure in regard to the handbook for CCIs was present. Furthermore, the Future Lights in Ceramics 2020 were selected. They will be presented at Ambiente fair in Frankfurt/Main in February 2020. Besides, they will be exhibited within the Premio Faenza exhibition from June to November 2020 at the MIC Faenza. Together with the partners the other planned workshops and summer schools for CCIs were discussed with regard of topics and venues.

The National Museum of Slovenia presented the transnational listing of existing design objects, part of WP T2, which is almost finished. However due to pandemics situation the finalization is postponed to July 2020. At the moment every partner is busy with collection of existing lectures/documentation of non-accessible lectures on design and art in ceramics. The layout was showed, how the library will look like in the future and was again discussed and optimized.
Due to COVID-19 crisis most of the physical fairs have to be cancelled. Due to this fact almost all actions in WP T3 have been postponed. Nevertheless, an online workshop took place on April 30th 2020 about the topics business models design and innovation and digital marketing and promotion strategies. All other physical fairs are postponed to 2021, like Argillá, workshop at ISIA Faenza, etc.

A vibrant conversation and discussion just started regarding the marketing strategy for ceramists in the future, part of the WP T4. Everybody knows that this will be a big challenge for all partners to filter the right marketing elements for all generations of creatives. There are a lot of ideas in mind, so the second point will be to bring these ideas together and set up a list for further decisions. It will be established a marketing leaflet for ceramists in the future to have an overview about what can every ceramist do by him/herself to get a better marketing campaign.

An update on the communication strategy was given by TU Ilmenau. It was presented the current progress and plans for the platform “Ceramics in Europe”. The details on each module of the platform in involvement with other work packages were showed and a proposed corporate identity was offered to all partners, which will be used for the platform. Also an analysis of the digital communication and direct communication was given.

In the end a general update on management topics were given, as well as the next steering meetings were discussed, in regard to looking forward to meet everybody face-to-face. So hopefully the next steering group meeting will be held in Bolesławiec.