CUMEDIAE, represented by Director of Strategy and Projects, Stefanie Thomas, is participating in the digital edition of the 3rd Summer Academy on Cultural and Creative Industries and Local Development. Happening this week, from 27 to 30 April, the initiative of the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities exclusively for selected participants is part of a three-year project aimed at providing a deeper understanding of the sector, and help carry out best practices and strategies to foster the potential of CCIs as drivers for local economic growth, job creation, and inclusion. The participants are all national and international policy makers, as well as those active cultural actors supporting CCIs in the local, regional, national and international level. Cultural and creative entrepreneurs are also more than welcome to take part in it.
Overall, business models and markets are constantly being created by practitioners, artists and, thanks to the wider availability of digital technology, their audiences as well. However, there is a lack of capacity in designing integrated strategies and leveraging the appropriate policies to fully tap the potential of CCIs. In this sense, initiatives such as Summer Academy are focused on examining how creativity of artists can merge with other sectors, and how the use of new technologies can boost innovation in various fields.
A clear example of the potential of digital resources is CUMEDIAE’s largest long-term project Culture Agora, which will be presented as a case study in the session Creativity in the digital age. Culture Agora is a multilingual free-accessible platform dedicated to connecting creatives and organisations with the latest opportunities in the CCIs sector.
Our platform is probably the largest and most updated collection of information and opportunities in the creative industries in Europe and the Southern Mediterranean. Many innovative communication campaigns for Culture and Development have trusted Culture Agora in order to reach big audiences, e.g. campaigns carried out by Interarts Foundations of Women and Culture, and Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. Besides, Culture Agora helps small cultural centres and entities maximise their visibility and engage with European CCIs as main players for collaboration, and for finding and sharing opportunities. We are glad our platform serves as a bridge to make the world know about these small organisations, as well as to directly contribute to the creation of new opportunities.
You can download here the press release about the presentation of Culture Agora.