Way you manage expectations of people

Carlos Martins

If one project fails, it’s normal, it is part of the process. It’s not the end of the world and we understood it shortly after beginning but in general we were very lucky - with the artists, with the audience, with the weather, with the media  - so we can’t complain that much. The key question is the way you manage the expectations of the people. Sometimes they are too high, sometimes they are too low and you need to promote your ambitions, to force them and the balance is very difficult to keep during the year. Another thing is that normally we work on short-term projects. Now we have to work in the same rhythm every day, every night, every weekend and it’s really tiring for the limited number of people in the centre of this program. You have to find new energy to continue every day and you have to keep external expectations balanced. I think that´s the million-dollar-question, and we managed to do that because people are still happy about participating in this project after all this time and you can feel it and also city is still happy for having European Capital of Culture project. On the other hand I have to say that the critique was very strong in the beginning and it was very difficult to manage that and also at the end it started to rule again because people started to ask about the future and they started to demand the next year the same as 2012. We had to explain that it’s not going to happen but at least recently we have been collecting more and more data proving the importance of the project. In the beginning we had just promises but now we have information, impact studies, evaluations made not by ourselves but by external bodies like local and national universities. Critics tend to disappear if you have objective information of the quality and the neutrality. Sometimes you also have to learn just to accept the critique and to use it to improve your work by making it better. 

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Carlos Martins

Carlos Martins

Chairman at ADDICT – Agency for the development of the Creative Industries in Porto, Portugal

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