SCHOOL OF CULTURE Cultural Management Manual

This manual is a practical guide to cultural management for young people working in or aspiring to work in the cultural and creative sectors. It was developed as a key output of the School of Culture — an Erasmus+ Youth Exchange (KA152-YOU) that brought together 45 participants from nine European countries in Plovdiv, Bulgaria in January 2026.

The manual covers seven core areas: business and entrepreneurship, project management, fundraising, financial management, marketing and branding, intellectual property rights, and design thinking. Each chapter combines practical tools and frameworks with real case studies contributed by the nine partner organisations from Bulgaria, Spain, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, Ukraine, Serbia and Greece.

It is written for practitioners, not specialists. No prior management background is assumed. The manual is free to use, share and adapt under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).

Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.