On Thursday, the Euro-Egyptian Cultural Programme celebrated the official launch of the iCulture participatory digital platform for creative industries at Consolya, a coworking space in downtown Cairo.

Riham Arram, national expert on intangible cultural heritage, co-founded the platform with Heba Saeed to offer a novel perspective on creativity.

"iCulture is focused on social development by creating and documenting cultural projects, as well as digitalising such projects as a means of sustainability and passing it on to the new generations," Riham Arram told Ahram Online.

The platform is an online gateway for young independent Egyptian talents to highlight their art work, including handicrafts, singing, writing, acting and music compositions.

Although its soft launch was only a month ago, around 150 young talents from Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Syria have already registered.

“We are working on the concept of creative industries, which is known to the whole world but in Egypt we see them as talents and arts. But it is much more because it is an industry that could be produced extensively and exported to the world,” Arram said.

“Our mission is how to transform such artistic industries to be seen by the world. We started up with a small fund from the Euro-Egyptian Cultural Programme, part of the EU National Institutes For Culture. Our project won over 500 other proposals," she added.

The next phase of iCulture will include consultation and training workshops for young artists, a monthly cultural salon and concert as well as handicrafts bazaar.