On September 27th, a group of graduate students, entrepreneurs, and investors from the cultural and creative industries attended the “ICCI-DoBe’s second Industry-Education Chain Creation Fund” Signing Ceremony as well as the “Creation Fund” Project Defense Ceremony at the DoBe Bund WE Space.

The day’s events began with a series of presentations by students of class 2020 from USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry (ICCI) , highlighting interdisciplinary collaboration of education and industry and “Campus & Industrial Park” model,  included the “Youth Reading” Projects to promote rural education in the Daliang Mountain Areas, Silk Painting work “The Profound Silk” as Intangible Cultural Heritage, “SHE CAN” to redefine success of women, video channel "Community Micro Update", self-media account "Cultural Creation", career information platform "Cultural and Creative Space Station", media fusion communication "Foreign Entrepreneurs", exhibition guide "Flower Branch Exhibition", and etc., and were followed by project defense sessions. The defense committee for the projects, however, were consisted of professionals and experts from the fields of cultural and creative industries, non-profit organizations, and government instead of university professors.

The “Youth Reading” project, aiming to recruiting student volunteers in the universities across China, has undoubtedly attracted wide public attention as it bridges the children in rural China (Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province) eager to see the rest of the world with university students dedicated to rural education and charitable programs through remote learning model. Ever since the start of the project, it has successfully recruited dozens of university volunteers, kicked off its first class at the Qian Xuesen Library & Museum, and even created a radio program “Reading from the Mountains” on the Himalayan platform.

“DoBe will work together with ICCI to build the chain between the education and industry to inspire more creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship among talents for the cultural and creative industry so that we will be able to gain new insights from the Generation Z and attract new blood into the industry,” said Mr. Bo JIA, the CEO of DoBe.

Weimin ZHANG, Dean of the ICCI, spoke highly of the “Creation Fund” project in partnership with DoBe and expressed sincere congratulations to the students of class 2020. “The Creation Fund, reflecting ICCI’s internationalization, interdisciplinary focus, and Industry orientation education concept, will serve as a successful attempt of SJTU’s interdisciplinary collaboration of education and industry,” said Weiming ZHANG, “Looking to the future, ICCI will continue to seek close collaboration between education and industry by taking creation, innovation, and entrepreneurship as its core,  and exploring new approaches to cultivate future industry leaders with creative spirit and thoughts that meet the needs of market and industry.”

Translator: Xiaoqiu ZHU