Frequently Asked Questions

1. What costs are involved?

All your essential travel, insurance and accommodation expenses will be covered and you will receive a daily allowance to cover food and drinks - you will be able to choose whether you dine in restaurants or self-catering. Because everyone is assumed to be struggling for money, we have kept pre-booked accommodation to a basic level of comfort and have organised a number of group meals and receptions to keep costs down. While you shouldn't expect to live as if you were on holiday, or take wads of Euros back home, you should have enough money for everything you need. You will usually have evenings to yourself, although we expect you to take the many opportunities to join in with other festival goers - at screenings, VIP interviews, or receptions perhaps. We have also scheduled some time to get to know Warsaw a little and even to do a spot of winter shopping.

2. When does the programme run?

The programme is scheduled to begin on Monday 28th November 2012 with a series of online activities. These aim to prepare everyone for the fortnight residential in Warsaw, to give you a chance to ask questions and to help the organisers and facilitators start to understand the different needs of group members. Throughout the week, we will facilitate Skype conferences, surveys and short individual reading/writing assignments about basic business responsibility and employability themes.

We are currently finalising details of a full day in Birmingham - likely to be on Tuesday 29th - which will include a chance for everyone to network and some short training sessions with members of the local Polish community. We want to familiarise you with some basic Polish words and phrases and introduce you to Polish history and economy through a documentary film and discussion with Polish migrants. This is an important output for the EU funders and, as we will explain during the weeks, understanding diversity is key to facilitating innovation.

Finally, around 6.30pm, we will join our Polish friends at a traditional meal in the city, including vodka, the national drink. This should be over in time for everyone to catch public transport home.

We plan to fly out of London Luton Airport on Sunday 4th December and return on Saturday 17th December.

3. Where is it held?

In Warsaw, Poland, our training sessions will be based at the historic Filmmakers Union building and the festival itself.

We will all stay at Nathan's Villa, a clean and safe hostel that is well-used to formal EU programmes like ours, and popular with university students and graduates. We have exclusive use of two dormitories (male and female) with individual lockers. Although you won't be supervised directly, a member of staff will be available to you on the phone and living in a private room in the hostel which doubles up as an office.

4. What exactly will the participants be doing?

One of the objectives of this programme is to explore how creative processes can add value to SME businesses back home.

Each morning the whole group will gather for a series of training and development activities, exploring modern business issues such as innovation, business responsibility and sustainable development, and practising the leadership and management skill of action learning. Essentially, the latter involves a series of work-related activities interspersed with reflective discussions and peer-to-peer coaching. We will encourage you to make these as creative as you wish in order to explore non-verbal ways of knowing, so expect lots of flip chart paper, post-it notes and coloured marker pens, as well as non-strenuous physical activities, including walks through nature to explore the important theme of ecology and systems thinking. While we won't be camping (winter in Warsaw is generally less grey than the UK but still cold!), we will be able to use our experience of living together to draw out valuable learning about issues such as organisational cohesion.

We will visit a range of creative businesses including studios and production companies and invite in a range of speakers such as entrepreneurs, producers, festival organisers, journalists and distributors involved in the content industry.

After lunch, we will work on individual and/or group assignments which require planning, research, and evaluation. For example, we will introduce you to the seven key business processes such as 'finding customers' and 'developing people', and ask you to explore how creative business approaches them. This kind of research will give you something valuable that can help change the conversation with employers. You will need to work together carefully, choosing from the packed festival programme of screenings, interviews and debates, and our own experiences as a group, pulling it all together into a creative presentation.

All of us will take it in turns to work in the press office, for example helping edit English press releases.

Each day around 5pm we will all meet up again to review our learning and make any adjustments to the content and process. We will use formal EU and awarding body paperwork to gather evidence against the new CBI draft employability frameworks.

Throughout the two weeks, you will explore your own passions and design a project that you can pitch to employers back home. We will also plan collaborative activities to find paid work.

5. What are the application requirements

You need to scan and email us:

- a photocopy of your passport;

- a copy of your degree certificate;

- an example of your written work (ideally a complete piece of at least 500 words).

Please phone us for a chat if you have any doubts.

We will then send you an application form and EU contract to sign and return.