The Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators (YCI Forum) is an annual series that supports emerging young artists and cultural actors who are using innovative practices to catalyze urban transformation in their communities. The report from the second annual Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators is now available online to read, download and share.

Growing out of the early Young Cultural Leaders Forum, this was the second year of the YCI Forum, bringing 61 participants to Salzburg from 18 countries. These Young Cultural Innovators represented a broad spectrum of the arts and culture scenes in their cities from photography to food, heritage to design.



The 2015 cohort came from nine YCI Hubs in cities around the world, including Athens, Baltimore, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Phnom Penh, Rotterdam, Salzburg, Seoul, and Tokyo. Following the program in Salzburg in October 2015, which incorporated plenary keynote sessions as well as the skills-building and problem-solving working groups, the YCI Fellows are now encouraged to return to their "hubs" to connect with their 2014 peers and remain engaged with this year's cohort in a growing local and global network.

The Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators (YCI) is an annual series of Salzburg Global Seminar that brings 50 of the world's most talented young innovators from the culture and arts sector together at Schloss Leopoldskron to help them develop the dynamic vision, entrepreneurial skills, and global networks needed to allow them, their organizations, their causes and their communities to thrive in new ways. The artistic disciplines represented by the young innovators range from the visual and performing arts, literature, and cultural heritage, to foods, fashion, architecture, and design. The YCI Forum represents a major commitment by Salzburg Global Seminar to fostering creative innovation and entrepreneurship worldwide with the intention of building a more vibrant and resilient arts sector and of advancing sustainable economic development and positive social change agendas worldwide.

Each annual YCI cohort will be comprised of ten expert facilitators and 50 young cultural innovators between the ages of 25 and 35 from around the world. The group will be balanced in terms of gender, genre, and geographic representation. Most of the participants will come from several "culture hubs" in various cities around the world that form the core of the YCI multi-year project, including Baltimore, Rotterdam, Phnom Penh, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, and Salzburg. Participants are selected through a highly competitive application and nomination process, to ensure outstanding quality and diversity of professional knowledge and experience within the Forum.

Forum components include a one-week annual program in Salzburg combining theory and praxis, with capacity-building sessions focusing on: intra and entrepreneurship, exposure to the latest digital resources, new business models, risk-taking and innovation, psychology of leadership and emotional intelligence, and cross-cultural communication and negotiating skills.

More information on the 2015 program can be found here: www.salzburgglobal.org/go/554

More information on the ten-year YCI Forum can be found here: yci.salzburgglobal.org