EU National Institutes for Culture - EUNIC


Job Shadowing: “A new Erasmus for professionals”

Dileta Nenėnė, head of the Creative Europe Desk in Lithuania, spent two days at the EUNIC Global office in Brussels in November. Together with Victoria Kyriaki from the British Council in Athens she participated in the evaluation meeting of the EUNIC Cluster Fund 2019 and exchanged with team members on their day-to-day work.

In her personal blog post he shares her experience in Brussels.

“I was welcomed to the EUNIC Global Office as one of the first job shadowers. Brussels wasn’t new for me at all since I work for the Creative Europe programme in Lithuania and I have business trips to Brussels twice a year. However, this was a totally different experience. And the first one to be in a foreign office, not a conference, nor a seminar or meeting.

Right when it was decided that the Lithuanian Culture Institute would be taking part in this inspiring project for professionals, it was clear to everyone there that I would apply to EUNIC Global, since I work mostly with application consulting for public grants. And also, because GLOBAL is my way of thinking and dreaming and reflects my interests and experiences. To be more precise, it’s more EUROPEAN right now and the expansion of my understanding of worldly cultural work happened to be also something new to me there in Brussels. I will be more precise in a bit.

Sybilla and Stefanie were the welcoming hosts to meet me at my first day in the office. The Bozar – Brussel’s Fine Arts Centre – office in Brussels is a wonderful place to work I must admit. At the office, I was instantly involved in all the activities, including webinars and general meetings of staff. Gitte is so professional, isn’t that a kind of a German gene? Robert and Roxane presented “European Spaces of Culture”, the EUNIC General Assembly was planned in front of my eyes (yes, so exciting!). I was lucky to have one of my job shadowing days visiting the “Ilucidare Playground” conference in an old post-industrial conversed winery, and the topic was so relevant to my work in LCI – Cracking the Future of Heritage.

However, I got the most from the (hard) work session to evaluate EUNIC Cluster Fund project applications. We had really deep discussions about what is important in this field, how we work with open calls for funding, and how we could get the most out of the information provided by applicants. I learned a lot, and I still do feel this value in my everyday work life.

Would you like some juicy details? I bumped into the cupboard, literally. The door to it was right next to the exit from the office and somehow my ergonomic intuition was pretty sure that this it the spot to leave the room. Four times in a row…It was a great laughter for everyone. But I have learned, oh yes, I have eventually learned were the real door is ...

The best part of my job shadowing in EUNIC Global for my soul was the people that I met, the places where we talked and which we explored together, the chats in between everything. Isn’t this a new professional Erasmus? I just loved it.

Please do job shadowing if you have the opportunity. But also choose carefully to get the most out of it. As I was lucky to have.”



  • Job Shadowing
  • Mobility

Co-funded by the European Union Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.