Eliana is a smiling and strong Italian woman graduated in Art Therapy in 2015, she is always been a “woman of the world” but her biggest love is the ocean! In 2017 Eliana decided to open her own business in Fuerteventura (Canary Island), a place that herself define “therapeutic” and so perfect to combine her passions and her job. At the beginning of the 2018 she officially opened her studio: a place of friendliness, accessibility liveability, it is a common place, a theatre of emotions of everyone involved. In her Art Therapy Studio there is a climate of security, hospitality and discretion, compassionate care and judgment- free. Since then, Eli there is running her combined therapies (art, massages, water sport etc.) with different kind of patients: people with alimentary disorder, people with disability, with psychological problem and so on.
Eliana is always been open to new incentives and running a studio by herself is not that easy, mostly she is not good on the marketing and social media world so thanks to a friend that has a business she discovered the EYE program and decided to sign up, hoping to find a figure that would help her a little bit with her new business but mostly to get new ideas to develop her therapies. Thanks to that she found Arianna!
Arianna is a young and motivated Italian girl, barely graduated in Adaptive and Sport Sciences. She was looking for an opportunity to learn some new skills to realize her dream: open her own business about Adaptive Sport, mostly adaptive Surfing. As she wasn’t really sure how to do it and about what she needed to realize it she decided to sign up in the EYE platform.
“The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do”.
Arianna would have had the opportunity to go to Canary Island (Surfing Place) and collaborate with a Therapist, a person that is using Art but also the Ocean to curate people. From the other side Eliana found a younger person that could help her with new ideas and projects for her business. So after the first Skype call they decided to start a collaboration without thinking twice!.
At the end of June Arianna arrived to Canary Island and the two got along really good since the first day. The firsts 2 months have been of great settlement. Arianna had to organize a little bit her new Canary life and Eliana get use to collaborate with another person. They had few weeks of training and to study the new situation. Since the beginning Eliana gave to Arianna a lot of material about Art Therapy so she could have a better idea about what was the Studio where she was going to spent the rest of the semester, also Eliana for her personal interest has read Arianna Business Plan and Work of Thesis, to help her with her project. The first period of the exchange has been mostly focused to know each other better, exchange of opinion, idea and planning the Erasmus tasks. It has been really stimulating for both NE and HE, a period of motivation and coming up with ideas. Eliana always says that her project wouldn’t grow as is growing without the young and “crazy” energy of Arianna. Fortunately this mood has been maintained for all the exchange, then obviously the all thing got more concrete and productive. Arianna had the opportunity to participate and follow an entire Art Therapy, after that, with her research skills she is been able to analyze it and give to Eliana great tips that she used on her future therapies.
While Eliana was giving the therapies Arianna helped with what she define “boring” bureaucratic and organizational part of her business: organizing the activities, managing the reservation, the social media, researching found etc. This helped Eliana because Arianna had perfectly the skills to do that but it gave also Arianna the opportunity to realize how much there is in the back ground of a business like the one she wants to open in the future. Obviously beside the organization of the beginning it has been anyway challenging because of the high season, all the work and the first experience for Eliana to work with someone. Beside that the mutual trust helped a lot to overcame any obstacles. Also a great Online Coaching program organized by Erasmus helped Arianna during the exchange, to be focus on her business, on the objectives of the plan and on her-self to live the situation at the 100% of her possibility. So all was going as it was planned but then for accident a great gift for Arianna it has came: the Art Therapy Studio started a collaboration with the Adaptive Sport Club of the Island so Arianna got the chance to follow 100% her idea of business plan, she was accompany Eliana’s participants to Adaptive Surfing as an addition of the Therapy. This collaboration turned out the greatest thing of the exchange and a mutual benefit. The cooperation turned out great because Arianna was able to work in her field, helping Eliana with their patients in a field where she wasn’t really familiar and get benefit from that. So the exchange continued following parallel Art and Sport: Eliana was managing the Art Therapy and Arianna helping with the sport part. Then the team of the 2 kept going with the “boring part” about the organization and marketing part of the business that if done in 2 it can get really fun and interesting. Thanks to gifts of life, the good planned exchange and the common interest, both NE and HE achieved their goals and even better than the expectation. Arianna got the idea of what means running a business, how to manage the bureaucratic part and got good economic and strategic tips about how to build it. In addition she learned a lot about Art Therapy and had the opportunity to also work in the Surf field. Eliana got the chance to organize better her activities, got more info and feedback about her activities and got 100% into the social media marketing world. In addiction she collaborated with a young and motivated girl that brought her new ideas, gave her tips and built things for her studio. Thanks to EYE program Arianna and Eliana created a great job and friend relationship that probably will never end!
