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Àngel Mestres Vila
Lecturer for the Master’s Degree in Cultural Management of the University of Barcelona. Director of the cultural management company Trànsit Projectes


IM: Interviewer from the Master’s programme
AM: Àngel Mestres

IM: Could you explain your work in the cultural management sector briefly?
AM: My work involves directing  TRÀNSIT, a Cultural Management company that aims to facilitate citizens’ access to cultural resources and to encourage social cohesion.

IM: How did you decide to work in this sector and how did you start out?
AM: I started in the field of education. First, in informal education and subsequently in more formal contexts. With a group of colleagues we set up the company and after 20 years we have evolved from purely educational projects to educational and cultural ones.

IM: What is your educational background and how have your studies helped you to attain the post that you hold and to carry out the projects that you manage?
AM: Although my degree is in a technical subject, I think that training is essential and for that reason I have taken various specialisation courses in business schools.

IM: How do you envisage the professional future of the sector? What possibilities will people wanting to join the sector in the next few years have? What qualities and qualifications should they have?
AM: I see the professional future of the sector as being complicated, although with opportunities for working in it. More in the private than in the public sector. The cultural sector (and extending it to include cultural services rather than the product) will offer an increasingly wide range of professional job openings. As a result, there are real possibilities. Those who want to work in this sector will have to demonstrate a capacity to conceptualise projects and put them into practice, making use of their knowledge in each and every one of the phases they go through. They will need to know how to find the ideal point between great ideas and the logistics to carry them out.

IM: How do you set about teaching your classes in the Master’s programme in Historical Culture and Communication? What objectives do you try to put across to the students?
AM: The aim that I seek to make clear is that the students have to be capable of understanding organisations and projects in general as changing elements that need new responses to improve the organisation both externally and internally.

IM: What is your opinion of the students you have met so far? What do you think their strong and weak points are?
AM: Generally speaking, they are well prepared from a theoretical point of view. Their weak point is that they find it hard to understand that in organisations you have to fetch quite a few cups of coffee before anyone will start bringing them to you.