International Panel Discussion “Connecting” as a part of the Belgrade

International Panel Discussion “Connecting” as a part of the Belgrade

The conference “Connecting” took place as a part the Belgrade Fashion Week at the Museum of Applied Art and it is dealing with the topic of cooperation between the public, private and civil sectors within the fashion industry. Participants consisted of representatives of different institutions and organisation: Martyn Roberts – Fashion Scout London, Melinda Rebrek – Ljubljana Fashion Week, Slađana Milojević –Fashion and Apparel Cluster Serbia – FACTS, Hristina Mikić – Foundation Group for Creative Economy, Milica Zatezalo – the National Coordinatior of the COSME programme within the Ministry of Economy, Ksenija Marković Božović, BFW Design Collective, Milorad Vasiljević – Chamber of Commerce of Serbia, Nenad Radujević – Belgrade Fashion Week and designers Ana Ljubinković and Budislava Keković. The spokeswoman of the Creative Europe Desk Serbia was Nina Mihaljinac, manager of projects of the Culture Desk.

Short lectures were held covering various topics, among others: Development of modern fashion design in the context of holistic, sustainable society development; Connecting the industry sector of fashion with independent Serbian designers; Regional creative economy and positioning creative entrepreneurship; Cooperation with regional and international fashion industries such as Fashion Scout London, Central European Fashion Days, Zona 45; The regional fashion project; Possibilities offered by international foundations; Cooperation with the public sector.

It often happens that this kind of conferences stop at the talks, however, this not the case now because a cooperation memorandum was immediately signed between BFW Design Collective and the Fashion and Apparel Cluster Serbia – FACTS. Throughout the years, Belgrade Fashion Week established cooperation with the educational system in this domain and realised successful projects in collaboration with various cultural organisations from the private, public and civil sectors so signing the cooperation memorandum was just another step towards improving commercial activities of independent fashion authors.

One of the mail conclusions of the conferences are the facts that inter-sector and inter-departmental cooperation, but also creation of the regional fashion project can make an incremental contribution to further development of fashion in Serbia and the region.