Gintautas Mažeikis
Head of the Department of Philosophy, Šiauliai University; Director of the Cultural Anthropology Centre of Šiauliai University and Editor of the magazine INTER studia humanitatis.

Gintautas Mažeikis is interested in the creative industries, critics of popular culture and symbolic contemplation, anthropology of modern society, political anthropology, philosophic anthropology, analysis of social discourses (general, propaganda, art critics).

Ingrida Tatarūnė
Senior Specialist of Planning and Finance Division of Zarasai District Municipality

Ingrida is a Master of Business Administration and Management, at present she is working on the Master thesis in public administration on the public and private partnership in the areas of regional development and tourism development.

Ingrida works in the areas of strategic planning and development of projects mainly related to the tourism development in Zarasai District of Utena County. She is interested in the regional and rural development including the development of areas located near the state borders. Ingrida took part in developing the Utena County map of creative industries. On the basis of the study an international investment project of creative workshop development in Utena County was prepared and submitted to the programme INTERREG IIIA.

Algimanta Ščiglinskienė
Director of Alytus Business Consultation Centre.

Education: in 1985 graduated from the Vilnius Pedagogical University, the speciality of chemistry-biology. Since 1991 has been working in the business structures and specialises in the management and marketing areas.

Since 1999 has been working in the development of the regional development plan model, took part in the preparation of Alytus County, as well as the Alytus City municipality, strategic development plan. She is an author and leader of many regional development and international co-operation projects. Algimanta specialises in the international project management. She has successfully implemented 12 PHARE projects.

Education: Leningrad University, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Ethics and Aesthetics. She has defended dissertation on the topic “Aesthetic Function of a Gesture in the Culture” in the same university. Since 2001 has been working in the Department of Philosophy and Culture Studies, Kaunas Faculty of Humanities of the Vilnius University, where she has established and co-ordinates a new BA study programme in culture management. During the recent four year period she explores the topic of culture consumption, publishes articles on this and other related subjects. She has been conducting the research on the audience of the modern dance festival in Kaunas together with the students of culture management speciality already for three years in turn. In the academic year 2002 and 2003 organised two scientific conferences on the culture consumption at the Vilnius University Kaunas Faculty of Humanities. At present she is taking part in the scientific project on the research of life style of the Lithuanian society.

Giedrius Jucevičius
Doctor of Social Sciences, Assoc. Prof. at the Kaunas Technological University, Faculty of Social Sciences, the Strategic Management Department

Education and areas of activity: Master of European Business Administration and Business Law at the Lund University (Sweden), Master of Higher European Economics Studies at the European College (Belgium/Poland). In 2004 defended doctoral dissertation on the topic “National Management Models under the Economic Transformation Conditions and from the Aspect of Cultural and Institutional Factors” at the Kaunas Technological University. He was on the internship and worked as a researcher assistant in the European University Institute (Florence, Italy), Lund University (Sweden). He has been conducting the researches in the areas of international competitiveness, clusterisation, national investments and business systems. Took part in the workshop in the Lee Laccoca Institute (USA). In 1999-2002 worked at the Committee on European Affairs under the Government of the Republic of Lithuania and was responsible for co-ordination of industry policy and economy competitiveness issues. He is a member of expert teams preparing the Lithuanian industry and innovations development programmes.

Egons Peršēvics
Specialist, The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia

Dr.Roberts Ķilis is a Cambridge trained social anthropologist where he got his MPhil and PhD degrees. Since 1994 he has worked as an Associate Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga where he teaches Economic Anthropology and Research Methods courses.  He has done an extensive one yearlong fieldwork in Western Siberia and participated in many research and consultancy projects in Latvia. He is the organiser of several international conferences. The 1995 conference on Microvelel studies of the transition led to the publication of a book Transition in the Baltic States; Micro-level Studies, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997. For some time he has been consultant to the Ministry of Welfare, the World Bank Latvia’s Regional Mission and UNDP Latvia as well as Hansabanka Latvija. His most recent research project (completed in Autumn 2004) was on the importance of ethnic differences in Latvia’s business community. Currently he is a project leader for the research on Creative Industries in Latvia. The research is financed by the Ministry of Culture and the British Council Latvia.

Evelin’s educational background is connected with the field of business administration and economics, and she is writing her PhD thesis at Tallinn University of Technology at present. Additionally, Evelin has worked as a Researcher and a Project Manager in the Estonian Institute of Economic Research since 1999, where her tasks have been to work out methodologies for researches, co-ordinate data collection and process, analyse results and provide research reports. Her research interests cover different fields; some examples and key words can be shadow economy, alcohol and tobacco market, and business tendency surveys. The latest research project was connected with creative industries, where Evelin co-ordinated economical mapping of Estonian creative industries as a head of the mapping team.

James Cornford is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne Business School and leading researcher within the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies. He has been researching the creative industries in the UK for over 15 years. Among other studies, he led the Creative Industries Cluster Mapping Study in the North East of England. For the eight years James has been working with teams in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on mapping the creative industries.

Geoffrey Brown
Director , EUCLID

Geoffrey Brown is the Director of the EUCLID group of companies, which he founded in 1993. EUCLID International, and its allied companies, EUCLID UK and EUCLID Canada, provide a range of European & international information & consultancy services.

Geoffrey was born in Australia in 1952, and graduated from the University of New South Wales in 1978 with a degree in English & Drama. He worked in arts management in Australia prior to coming to the UK, and was the Executive Director of the Australian Youth Performing Arts Association. In 1979, he launched “Lowdown”, a national journal for youth performing arts, which is now the longest running arts publication in Australia. In the UK, he worked as Assistant Director at the Darlington Arts Centre and Deputy Director for Merseyside Arts, before joining colleagues to establish the Positive Solutions consultancy, prior to the launch of EUCLID. He is a member of Team Europe, the European Commission’s panel of speakers, and was until recently a member of the Council of the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts.

Lyn is the Executive Director of the Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS), which is a creative industry support agency set up in 2000. This is an innovative project working with creative businesses in the Greater Manchester area developing networks and clusters of enterprises and promoting activities to support their growth. Lyn has worked extensively in the field of cultural development. She was responsible for cultural policy development at the Manchester City Council for six years and coordinated the City’s cultural strategy published in 2002. Educated at the University of Essex and London School of Economics she has a BA Hons in Comparative Literature and an MSc in Social Anthropology.

Education: Vilnius State Pedagogical Institute, in 1978 acquired a speciality of a mathematics teacher. In 2000 she obtained a qualification of a teacher of Lithuanian language in the Centre of Pedagogue Professional Development. Since 2003 she is MA student of Andragogics at the Vytautas Magnus University.

Since 1979 she has been living and working in Visaginas. Since 1982 she has been engaged in managerial work: was a responsible Secretary of the Sniečkus Town (Visaginas) Executive Committee, Deputy Director of the secondary school, since 1991 – Director of Visaginas State Language Centre and since the same year – a main organiser of the International Music Festival “Visaginas Country“. For many years she has been a member of the Visaginas Municipal Council (now she may not be in such a position because of a present occupation), an active member of the Co-ordination Council of Visaginas Public Organisations. Chairwoman of the Visaginas Division of the Lithuanian Social Democrat Party.

Antanas Kibickas
Director of “Utenos Indra”, Member of the Council of Utena District Municipality

Antanas Kibickas completed the study programme of journalism at Vilnius University. From 1984 till 1990 was engaged in journalistic activity. Starting from 1990 occupies the position of Director of the company UAB “Utenos Indra”.

The main field of activity of UAB “Utenos Indra” is publishing. The section of seals and printing house are operating in this publishing house. Currently the publishing house has put into operation two new pieces of polygraphic equipment.

Since 1993 “Utenos Indra” is publishing the newspaper “Utenos Apskrities Žinios” (eng. Utena County News) and since 2004 Mr. Kibickas is in charge of the radio station “Ir tau ir tavo miestui” (eng. To You and To Your Town). The journal “Poilsis Aukštaitijoje” (eng. Rest in Aukštaitija) is being published since 2005.

Kęstutis Ptakauskas
Director of “Bonsai Studija”

Managing Director and the main shareholder of UAB “Eristika” founded in 1994.

The main activity of the company is import and export of car parts and wholesale and retail trade of car parts.

The founder and Director of the public institution “Bonsai Studija”. “Bonsai Studija” is engaged in the promotion of Japanese culture in Lithuania, organises art exhibitions, training, provides services of planting.

Since 2002 Mr. Ptakauskas takes part in international exhibitions of bonsai in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia.

In 2004-2005 he organised the first international exhibitions of bonsai and suiseki not only in Lithuania but also in other Baltic states. Traditional Japanese arts such as bonsai, hand ceramics, sumi-e, calligraphy, katana, origami were presented in these exhibitions. Both exhibitions were granted international recognition.

During the EBA congress which will take place in Poland in 2006, Mr. Ptakauskas will be invited to join the European Bonsai Association (EBA).