The project Interreg-MED CHEBEC “Hacking the Mediterranean economy through the Cultural and Creative Sector” aims at supporting the cultural sector in its access to new global markets preserving its own territorial identity. To this end, it fosters a pilot programme that includes training, consultancy, mobility, transnational meetings and financial aid for internationalisation. Ten partners from five Mediterranean countries are participating in the project, among which we can find city councils such as those of Barcelona or Bologna, cultural organisations such as AMI (Marseille) and research centres such as the Universitat de València (Econcult). The pilot project led by Econcult began in December 2018 with the selection of fourteen Valencian cultural organisations as beneficiaries of the comprehensive programme to support the internationalisation.

An intensive training and tutoring programme of over eighty hours, developed from February 2019 to January 2020, has enabled the Valencian beneficiary organisations to design their own internationalisation plans. In parallel, these organizations have also participated in international events in Seville, Marseille and Bologna with the aim of contacting and networking with other participants from other regions.

After all this work, the last phase aims at funding the selected projects. As Raúl Abeledo, the project's principal researcher, explains, "it was not easy at all to make the selection, given the quality of all the proposals presented and the exceptional group of participants". Finally, four plans have been selected for funding with a total budget of ten thousand euros: Ana Illueca Ceramics, Barret Cooperativa Valenciana, PhotOn Festival and Drawfolio.

Ana Illueca is a Valencian ceramist which, starting with traditional Valencian ceramics, has rethought, innovated and adapted these traditions to the present time, creating pieces that are developed between art and utility. Chebec will finance its participation in the "Salone del Mobile" fair in Milan next April, where it will exhibit its works in the "Ventura Project" space, an exhibition area in Fuorisalone that is the furniture fair's spin-off.

Barret Cooperativa Valenciana is a documentary production company that starts from the idea of making documentaries with the intention of giving voice to the protagonists of the projects and building the discourse based on their testimonies and experiences. The funding of the Chebec project will allow this cooperative to subtitle its interactive documentary "In the Gap" in several languages, which will allow them to position themselves within the international market with their interactive documentary proposals.

PhotOn Festival, organised by Documenta Photo, is an international festival of photojournalism organised in Valencia. For PhotOn Festival, photojournalism is a tool for change and they work to bring it closer to citizens from a platform that respects the work of professionals. Chebec funds the creation of the international consortium "PhotOn Green" which will carry out an international project documenting the climate crisis in Europe for at least two years. To this end, PhotOn will organise meetings with its partners in Lyon and Athens, among others.

Drawfolio is a web platform where illustrators and graphic artists can build their own portfolio website in a few minutes without any coding skills. It is thanks to Chebec that Drawfolio will be able to foster its internationalisation project by attending the Bologna Book Fair in March. At this fair, Drawfolio will share a stand with one of the organisations that participate in the Chebec project in Marseille, "Mat Paper Art". This involves collaboration between an online platform and a graphic designer that works on paper design, resulting in a successful case of collaboration between organisations from different regions and different cultural backgrounds.