CUMEDIAE was honoured to attend the 7th edition of the European Creative Industries Summit: “Europe@Cross-Roads a New Agenda for Innovation”, held on November 27 in Brussels.

The European Creative Industries Summit, hosted by the European Creative Business Network in collaboration with THEARTS+, brought participants from the cultural and creative industries across Europe and speakers from Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom. These speakers suggested innovative practices in the culture creative sectors and effective policies to support the “Initiative Report on Cultural Creative Industries”.

Sven Gatz (Minister of Culture Media and Youth in Belgium) and Kirsi Kaunsharju (Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland) discussed new ideas for policies in the cultural creative sectors. They indicated that the public should be in the middle of this process, and cultural industries should make use of innovation. Additionally, Sven Gatz reported that cooperation with colleagues from other ministries (such as the Ministry of Economics and Development), would be nice; however, he believes a cross-sectorial partnership with other ministries in Belgium would be risky at this moment.

Innovation and Creative Industries

The second session was focused on understanding innovative practices in creative industries. Jan Bormans (Startups.Be) lectured on start-ups in Belgium. He described that founding a start-up was not attractive a long time ago in his country. However, at this moment, Belgium has 4000 start-ups, and the creative sector contributes to the Flemish GDP with a 2.7%. Jan Bormans highlighted that start-ups cooperate with companies for technical expertise, access to market and customers, image reputation and fundraising. Peter Kentie lectured on Eindhoven365, an organisation that contributed to making the city of Eindhoven become one of the top 10 innovative cities in the world. In order to attain this goal, Eindhoven365 developed a brand that matched the city’s marketing strategy and was accepted and loved by the people of Eindhoven.

Issues in the cultural creative industries
In the closing session, Bart Ahsmann (CLICKL. NL) and Ugo Bacchella (Fondazione Fitzcarraldo) discussed about national innovation agendas for cultural creative industries. Bart Ahsmann argued that if we want to establish a creative industry, a strong sector is required. Furthermore, he stated that changes such as, the emergence of systematic issues, have blurred boundaries and individualization. In order to approach these issues, Bart Ahsmann proposed the following questions: How to organize value creation? How to address individual needs?
Ugo Bachella pointed out that the contribution of creative industries to the Italian added value is 14.4 percent. He recommended empowerment, capacity building and stimulation of collaborative approaches to combat fragmentation.

“What about the future?”
The European Creative Industries Summit concluded that in 2020, there needs to be changes and innovation for cultural creative industries. For this reason, Pieter Aarts (Design Management Network) and Bernd Fesel (European Creative Business Network) agreed that it is necessary to make funding schemes accessible for project development.