Posts with tag EU

On April 27 2010, the EU Commission launched a Green Paper on how to unlock the potential in the cultural and creative industries. The twenty pages long paper build on former studies of the economic importance as well as job creating within these industries, and suggests approaches, incentives, and pose retoric questions as of how to unlock the potential that they found.

The European network Encatc has, together with Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths University of London and Nätverkstan in Göteborg, prepared a response. Download it here:encatc-response-to-eu-green-paper .

Read this former post from the European Forum of Cultural Industries in Barcelona on March 29-30 2010.

The incubator Centre Dansaert Centrum, Creative Business Centre, is placed in the central Flemish part of Brussels that has become very hip and popular. A few years ago the area was run down and a place many avoided. And we know the story.

Artists moved in, gradually the status of the area grew. Today it has been renovated with apartments and shopping area. It has kept the small-scale feeling and in every corner and street you find them; the energetic people designing clothes, selling craft, running second hand stores, hat designers, architects, coffee shops and others.

For Centre Dansaert Centrum it was an attractive place to have an incubator. It’s an attractive spot, but too expensive for newly started initiatives. In the old storage building with origins back to 1870s, offices and space were created to host small and newly started companies. Today they have around fifty entrepreneurs in the building.

To get a place you introduce your project or idea to Fabien Lambert. You apply on an already existing idea or project. You pay one set amount per month and everything is included: Rent, advice and support on business plan and development, electricity and other related costs. There are eight incubators in the region, financed publicly by Ville de Bruxelles and Region Bruxelles-Capitale and of course the competition between the incubators and funding is there.

Two enthusiastic entrepreneurs and one gallerist meet us; one musician running the music company Cypres; one of the owners, Benoît Vancauwenbergh, of a fairly new communication agency 6+1; and the man behind the small gallery specialized on African artists, Nomad Gallery.

The visit was part of a joint meeting between Eurocities and Encatc in Brussels 1-2 of June 2010. Read about other incubators under the category “Incubators” on this site.

There is a unison tone on the European Forum on Cultural Industries in Barcelona. Cultural and Creative Industries are seen as the driving force of economy in Europe. It’s among the top priorities. Figures presented show that this field employ 15% of Londoners, between 2000-2005 creative industries grew by 10% in Europe which is more than other industries, and holds 3,1% of GDP in Europe. Everyone is here; ministers and bureaucrats from all around Europe and from all levels from European Commission to state, region and local level. Civil servants, University lecturers and professors, and representatives from cultural companies to the business field. And they all agree. Creative Industries hold a potential of economic growth in Europe. This has to be part of the European 2020 strategy.

Spain holds the presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2010. And they have chosen to organize the Forum in cooperation with European Commission and Chamber of Commerce in Barcelona. Perhaps it’s not so surprising. Barcelona has fostered many famous Artists, as Pablo Picasso who grew up here as young, and of course the home of Gaudi, the famous architect and foremost Artist in Art Noveau tradition. Around the city you find Gaudi’s architecture, but also sculptures and Art works done by many other Artists in a mix of modern and traditional. The Catalonian State has put culture high on the agenda and are proud of their Artists.

Perhaps significant of the Forum is the lack of insight among the ministers and bureaucrats of what the creative industries consist of. What it is. The risk of EU putting money into the wrong incentives, and in all good intentions write new declarations that never reach the actual field is large. The expected evaluation of Mike Coyne, Director of Centre for Strategy and Evaluation Services, might be helpful in throwing some light on who all the creators are and their effects on local and regional structures. Also the expected survey by Giep Hagoort, Professor of Art and Economics at Utrecht University and Utrecht School of Arts, this spring is promising. His message being, which is also our experience from the work we have done at Nätverkstan and backed by several reports of this field from among others UK; it’s a field run by Artists within in different Art forms, organized in small-scale, micro and nano businesses and freelancers who work in networks and informal structures. When putting forward incentives and supportive structures in the cultural field, these have to be as complex as the field is.

Also significant is the lack of small-scale Artists in panels and as keynote speakers. They are there, but not as many as you would wish for.  Instead you find some of them outside in an alternative forum, campaigning for the freedom on Internet, led by well-known comic Leo Bassi. Government is promoting a “download law”, which many Artists are protesting against. Inside, at the Forum, several of the Cultural Ministers and other representatives on the contrary put forward the necessity of strong Intellectual Property Rights.

The Forum ended with six of the Cultural Ministers (we missed the Swedish Minister) giving their comments from a parallel meeting where creative industries has been discussed and with the aim of presenting a Green Paper on Culture. A Green paper released by the European Commission is a discussion document, which hope to stimulate debate and be a process for consultation on a topic. It usually comes before the White Paper, which is a more formal document. This was never presented; it was still too unready, but expect the Green Paper coming during spring.

And outside business were going on as usual among our cultural entrepreneurs; street musicians, living sculptures, painters, and other Artistic professionals.

Four conference days filled with seminars, working group meetings, worksops, study visits and meetings in Barcelona just took place at the Encatc Annual Conference.

During the talk between Isabelle Schwartz from European Cultural Foundation, Angels Margarit from Angels Margarit Dance Company, and Angel Meastres from Transit the role of cultural managers were tossed and turned. What is the role of cultural managers? Is it only a role mainly having Artistic production on one side and management on the other? On other point put forward was that of representation within the EU-institutions and funding. The Artistic point of view is not put forward in an organized form, since the organization among Artists is quite week. The publishing house, recording companies, film industry are represented and have organisations that lobby for their interest, but not the Artists. That is more on individual level. There is an interesting balance between framework and independence, something Angel Meastres put forward, and where is the cultural manager? They are mainly emphasizing ideas and how to find money, not society and building infrastructre. Something to consider in educational programmes around Europe.

A visit at Can Xalant showed an Artistic collective, Transit, running residency-programmes, workshops and exhibitions. An old farming house, owned by the municipality, now embedded and surrounded by larger companies and industries. Their deal was quite unusual. The municipality set up a competetion to find who would get the possibility to run the building. Artistic groups sent in their proposals of activities and ideas. Transit won and had now built an infrastructure, programmes, activities and resiencies. Now it’s time to apply again, with a new application. Their time run out in December, and they will get the decision…in December. January 1 they are supposed to continue with programming if they get money, if not, they are supposed to leave the house with everything in it. Either step on the gas pedal or brake.

So, how do you plan a serious and sustainable organization under those conditions?

For the conference programme, look here. Nätverkstan took part in two presentations: 1) the working group meeting “Creative Entrepreneurship and Education in Cultural Life”, download the pdf here: encatcwg_barcelona-oct09. , and 2) the dialogue on “How to detect creativity potentials in the digital environment” together with Jordi Sellas i Ferrés at, among other things, RBA Audovisual. Download the presentation here: encatc09-presentation-oct-09_2.

On a café in San Francisco close to Union Square, in a rest between meetings with cultural organisations and Artists, the Artist Jörgen Svensson together with a few of us from Nätverkstan started a discussion on how Artistic competence could be an asset for city development. It was June 2008 and the European Commission were assigning the coming year as the year of creativity and innovation. The question intriguing us was: What boosts creativity? And how can an Artist’s competence be used in real life challenges, not only as an Artistic project, but as an asset for city developers? The project Community Art Lab took form.

The idea is simple: Put together people with different competencies to create a creative process which will enable new perspectives and ideas to form. This will become a resource for city development and innovative ideas. In this project we want to have local authorities, Artists, Art University and other expertise working together. The process is led by an Artist, and starts by the city authorities presenting a real challenge they are dealing with. All participants in the process are equally important for creativity to take form; the working method is to work in a genuine and long-term cooperation in a group of the different competencies, and through the process created catalyze ideas and find alternative solutions to challenges.

The project start with a five day Lab in the city with the partners involved. The starting point is the presentation by city authorities and where the invited group are seen as an asset to find alternative solutions and action plans. An intense five working days in a Lab-form starts. The process continues over time, between three to six months. A process leader leads the Lab and is a guide and mentor in the continuing work. The Lab-form is flexible and new competence and expertise can be added as the work proceeds.  Read more of the project in the outline: community-art-laboratory_090603.

To read more of the study trip to San Francisco, look under Category with the same name. A quick look can be done on “Thought on the road” and “Public art and entrepreneurship” . The democracy project the South Bank Process in Göteborg, can be found on “Transformation: from Warehouse to Cultural Center” and “Democracy projects”. Read also about the Encatc Working Group “Creative Entrepreneurship and Education”. Also read about the Artistic group Berlin, working with process as a method, and also the project Art and Politics in Västra Götaland.

Committee of the Regions, a political assembly giving local and regional authorities within EU a voice within the EU structure, arranged a two-day meeting in Brussels on 20 – 21 of April. More than four hundred participants gathered, together with a hundred invited “young talents” from many parts of Europe, to discuss what makes regions and cities creative, what would make Europe more creative and together with practical examples both in panels and study visits around Brussels.

The first panel discussion addressed the question “What makes regions and cities creative?”. A crucial question for EU-Commission if the aim of the year of creativity and innovation is supposed to give results in more innovation and affect economy in a positive way. Many things were put forward, both by the panel, and also by the many young entrepreneurs, cultural practitioners and students in the audience. Why doesn’t education in Europe have more ideas about how to foster creativity? How come the visionary eyes of the young child is gone in the eyes of grown-ups? What happens going through the educational system? Many Art Educations are quite conservative, how could these change? How can Artists and politicians work more together? Are there educational tools to be used? Where do you turn to if you have ideas of something to start?

On the question “If you get to choose, what is the priority action at EU level?” the answer was unison: Get rid of the blocks in EU, make access to EU money less bureaucratic!

A crucial question if the hopes of creative economy is to come true. There is also a close link between the year of intercultural dialogue in EU last year, and the year of creativity and innovation. If new creative ideas are to happen, the wide variety of competence, skills, cultural and ethnic backgrounds need to be addressed and taken care of in a different way than is done today. There are hopes that the creative field will be the new savior in the financial crisis. Perhaps it will be. But only if you do a correct analysis of the field, understand how running organisations, Artistic practice, projects work, using the competence in the field to find the right incentives to catalyze the potential – there are of course an enormous potential. If you don’t, and get stuck in policies and the overestimated perception of what creativity and innovation is, it will be more difficult. There is a balancing act that needs to be performed.

Artist Jörgen Svensson represented Region Västra Götaland with the project Art and Politics and the project Community Art Lab formed together with Nätverkstan, a project based on using creative processes as a tool for city development. Interesting projecs were for instant FIRST innovation Park in Brno, Czech Republic, and the housing project led by Territorial and Urban Development of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain, led together with Mia Hägg, an archtiect in Paris running Habiter Autrement. Urbact, European Programme for Urban Sustainability, just launched a report that can be found on the website.

The Community Art Lab project will soon be posted on this website. Other posts connected to this are for instand Robert McNulty from America for the Arts, on Migration and Entrepreneurs, the seminar in Barcelona in January on the same topic, and examples from India. A programme of the seminar can be downloaded here CreativeCitiesRegions16-04-09. Encatc had a smaller seminar in the afternoon of the 21st of April to continue the discussion, with interesting inputs from Pascale Bonniel Charier of experiences from Grand Lyon and Donato Guiliani from Region Nord Pas de Calais. Download the programme for the Encatc seminar here seminar_encatc090421.

The first meeting of the Encatc working group “Entrepreneurship and Education in Cultural Life” was in held in Barcelona last week as a continuation of the seminar held by University of Barcelona on creativity and innovation.

Many things were discussed at the meeting. How can educators enable creativity in education? If we are to be more innovative, educations and educators need to be more open towards risk taking and failing, and how can this be taught in the class-room? To fail is part of innovation processes, how can we create a more open attitude towards this? Students are using education as a commodity they buy, becoming more customers than students. How can patience towards the not-planned discussions increase? To work in the cultural field you need all this; risk taking, ability to work in flexible and constant changing environment – how can education be formed to support this?

Read the short notes from the meeting here:  encatc/wg1.barcelona09.pdf. The seminar in Barcelona was presented at this site under “Seminar on creativity in Barcelona”.

Joan Pedragosa, from ITD in Barcelona, starts his presentation with a rethoric question. “Who is this?” he says showing a photo projected on the wall of the Swedish EU Commissioner, and Vice-President at the Commission, Margot Wallström. Silence in the audience. No-one knows. “Well, she said”, he continues, “in our paper the other day that working in EU is not sexy”. And he looks out on the audience…”so, if EU is not sexy, what do they think the European year of creativity and innovation will be?”.

Many angles of the topic creativity and innovation were presented at the seminar at Universitat de Barcelona on January 26, as, probably, one of the first (of several we can guess) seminars on the topic of the European year.  In a mixture of speakers of researchers and practioners, attempts to define the words creativity and innovation specifically for culture was put forward, together with practical examples from ITD, Goldsmiths University, Talent Factory, European Institute of the Meditteranean (IEMed) and several others. Perhaps the most striking presentation was held by Milena Dragecivic-Sesic, head of University of Arts in Belgrade, when she came down to two processes that would enable creativity and forcefully declared that firstly: We need an interdisciplinary approach and encounters within all different areas to succeed, and secondly: Integrate the margins! There is no curiosity. We are telling others to adopt our way of living, this will not work. We have to reinvent Europe where knowledge should not be exported one way, it has to be both ways. And she knows, living in a country that is not yet part of the EU.

Nätverkstan held an intervention at the seminar, download a short version here: seminar/barcelona0901261.pdf. Nätverkstan also met students at the University studying to become project managers. The presentation can be downloaded here:pres/universitatbarcelona.pdf .

The programme of the seminar.seminar/creativity090126.pdf.

EU Commission has decided to designate the year of 2009 to creativity and innovation. As with all years designated to a specific topic, also this one will show a flood of seminars and workshops around Europe on this and related areas.

Starting off the rocket is University of Barcelona, organising the seminar “Creativity and Innovation in cultural cooperation projects” on January 26. The seminar is organised in cooperation with Encatc and will be held at the University.

Download the programme: seminar creativity090126.pdf.

The European network Encatc is at this moment putting the last touch to the programme planning for 2009. It’s a programme full of activities, networking and sharing of knowledge. The working group “Creative Entrepreneurship and Education in Cultural Life” starts the year in Barcelona, Spain, in the middle of January. We start with combining a seminar held by Universitat de Barcelona on innvoation and creativity – yes, it’s a way to start the EU year of “Innovation and Creativity” – with working group discussions. The programme will soon be posted on the Encatc website.

The idea with the working groups is to share knowledge and experience among professionals within different areas. The working group on entrepreneurship plan to do several different things during the year such as study visits, conference in Chicago invited by our American colleagues, the project Community Art Lab and the web.  Sharing of knowledge is important, but perhaps more so inspiration. Inspiration can take you far, and is a factor for innovative ideas.

To view the image, double click on it. Find the plans: encatc-wgprogramme2009.pdf and the plan for the Community Art Lab: community-art-laboratory.pdf.

“It’s a total failure! We have hundreds of policy papers, but has anything changed?”. One of the participants of the round table burst out in frustration. After four days on the Encatc Conference in Lyon (France) on the topic “Intercultural dialogue and project management”, listening to professors, directors, general secretaries, presidents, coordinators on different European levels, you wonder.

78 million Europeans live in poverty, the Belgian newspaper Le Soir shows in an article just a day after the conference. 78 millions. It’s equivalent to 16% of the European population.  At the same time as educators from Europe gathered in Lyon to discuss intercultural dialogue, ministers gathered in Marseille to take up the fight on poverty and social exclusion in Europe. Policy papers are written, at the same time as people in Europe, many of them immigrants, struggle to find a job and to live above the poverty line. People are still killed in Europe today on the basis of the colour of their skin, religious belief or for putting forward controversial opinions. So what is missing? There is not a lack of initiatives. Non-profit organisations, artists and cultural entrepreneurs start new projects all the time to address and put light on societal challenges and difficulties. On a small-scale grassroot level these initatives struggle in an unpredictable funding system, where the policies written seem to miss their purposes.

Intercultural dialogue. What in the world does it mean? A quick look in the Encyclopaedia suggests that “intercultural” consider the processes where people with different languages and cultures communicate with and influence each other. “Dialogue” is said, in the same dictionary, to be a conversation between two or several persons. The dialogue, the same source suggests, gives excellent opportunity to let the participants characterize themselves, in opinions, judgements and ways of expression. What happens when you put these two words together? Do the meaning get stronger when putting two words of communication next to each other? Or do they simply take out each other, so the meaning gets pointless?

In Lyon we were presented to two projects that in interesting ways try to reach people, communicate and experiment with new forms of expressions: Image-aiguë and the Lyon Opera project Kaléidoscope.

Artists’ situation in USA was described on this website here in June this year.

Two Swedish books (in Swedish) with a critical perspective on how the question of multicultural society has been handled in Sweden is Etnotism by Aleksander Muttori at Bwana Club, and Befria oss från mångkulturalism edited by Rasoul Nejadmehr, Sven-Eric Liedman och Dariush Moaven Doust published by Natur & Kultur.

This is the title of a series of articles starting today in the Stockholm based daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter written by the journalist and author Göran Rosenberg. First out is an article of the US boarder to Mexico and the Mexican immigration situation in mainly California, but also rest of the US. It tells about the enormous drama that is performed every day, every hour at the boarder posts, and also the drama of the illegal immigration. The article outlines in an interesting way the complexity of the situation and in the end draws a parallel with the European situation. Boats from Africa overloaded with people tries to get in to a Europe, where barriers towards the outside tends to get higher and higher, and demands for stricter legislation is raised from the inside.

We wrote a small note on this blog on the same issue in July this year. The perspective put forward by Mr McNulty from the American for the Arts is an interesting aspect. According to him immigrants start 40% of new businesses in US. Perhaps supporting this development, together with a variety of incentives to art and culture can be an opening for positive changes?

A recent report on creative economy shows that the creative industries are one of the most dynamic emerging sectors in world trade. Over the period of 2000-2005, trade in creative goods and service increased by an annual rate of 8,7 percent. World exports of creative products were valued at 424,4 billion dollars in 2005, compared to 227,5 billion in 1996. Impressive figures that show creative products as an important factor in world economy. And hopes are high for what this might lead to: “The creative economy has the potential to generate income and jobs while promoting social inclusion, cultural diversity and human development”. Creative industries are put forward as important not only of the European economy, but also as a solution for developing countries and reaching the Millennium goals on fighting poverty. Creative economy will both generate jobs and income, and solve the social difficulties the world is facing. These are very high expectations and do raise some reflections.

Globalization and the rapid growth of ICTs have, the report points out, opened a whole new range of possibilities for the commercial development of creative products. But this requires access to Internet. Manuel Castells, the American sociologist, wrote about this already in 1996-97 in his trilogy of the Information Age (revised 2000). In the three-volume book he wrote about the rise of the new economy and how new technology and access to information is integrated in this development. This is, though, very much a western society phenomena, he said, where the developing world was left behind. Africa, to take one example, was, as he said, almost completely cut off the Internet by the simple fact that access to computers and electricity was basically non-existent outside the capital cities. On a visit by Nätverkstan at the office of the Eastern Africa Theatre Institute in Kampala, Uganda, in 2005, one of the main problems put forward by the Director was lack of electricity and proper computers in towns outside the capital. The possibilities to use the full potential of Internet and digital communication was therefore uncommon, and for many artists non-existent. In Tanzania in 2006, the issue was the same. At Bagamoyo College of Art, access to Internet existed, but was unreliable.

Reading the report also raises the question of: Who are the producers of Art and who runs the Creative Industries? One thing artists have in common, something put forward by artists we meet and have met in for example Sweden, Turkey, Africa and USA, is they don’t get paid for the work they do. Reasons differ depending on society, but they all have difficulties surviving on their artistic work. So whom are we talking about? Who is leading the creative economy? Where are initiatives taken by decision-makers most probable to have an impact and serve as a catalyst for the changes expected in the report?

The creative industries are an important part of the economy today and the report put forward interesting results supporting this. The creative economy may very well be an opportunity, that well handled can create new possibilities in society. But it can never be the only solution to world problems. To succeed, expectations need to be realistic and the initiatives taken need to be relevant and take into account the specific local context in which they exist.

The Creative Economy Report 2008 is a cooperation between several United Nations organizations and among them United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Dowload the Summary ditc20082ceroverviewen.pdf, or the full report ditc20082cer_en.pdf.

In March the EU commission installed Culture Sector Platforms, and called for an expression of interest from organisations and networks in Europe. The reply was overwhelming and in June three platforms were organised: The Rainbow Platform, Access to Culture and Potential of Creative Industries. Each of these has divided into another 3-5 working groups. The idea is to create a form for the cultural field to organise itself and together post recommendations to the commission. It’s an assignment that does take some thought and requires a cultural field that can stand together; organisations and networks have to look beyond their own interest and not as today among networks, see each other as competitors. This also requires that  diversity in the field be mirrored in the formation of the groups.

A first meeting in the group on the interface between artistic practitioners and creative industries, led by Yudhishthir Raj Isar and Simone Dudt, was on Friday (the 5th) in Brussels. An interesting meeting, where questions like the following were put forward: The question of Intellectual Property rights especially in the field of music and film, how will artists get paid for their work, how to keep diversity and not move towards unity, consumer and audience perspective, the lack of finance and social security for artists and where in creative industries do minority groups of artists like composers fit in? You also have on one hand an audiovisual sector that in itself is an industry, on the other hand composers where no industry exists.

To read more about the platforms, read this: platforms.pdf. Nätverkstan and Encatc presented some comments and thoughts on the meeting. Read them here: comments_nv.pdf.

Should every artist, dancer, musician, festival manager, poet and writer become entrepreneurs? What is the position of art? Will subsidies to art be taken away? Goodbye to fine arts and the artistic work that can’t survive on the market.  Many cultural organisations and institutions, journalists and artists in Sweden discuss the issue these days, among them the Swedish Union for Theatre, Artists and Media, who recently published a book on their views on cultural policy. Igniting the discussion is the work of The Committee of Inquiry on Cultural Policy that has the assignment to overlook and change the Swedish Cultural Policy, a work that during this year has been followed by problems and is being questioned for different reasons; one is for having an unclear distinction in what is art policy and what is cultural policy.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sports in UK, presented in 2007 a model that might be helpful in these discussions. The model explains the economic relation between art, creative industries and the rest of the economy. It’s a fairly simple model, but useful in understanding why subsidies to art is necessary and effects the rest of the economy. The base, the core creative fields, is the poets, musicians, artists, dancers and choreographers; the producers of art that need public funding to get paid time to do their artistic work. Without them there will be no cultural industry. It’s only if you have the core, that publishers have anything to publish, or museums has anything to show. And without a cultural industry, there will be no creative industries. A publisher needs a bookstore to sell her books. This has a value for the rest of the economy, since for instance manufacturing and service sector benefit from the expressive outputs done by artists.

If values like “Art for Art’s sake” feels a bit dusty and not enough as argument these days, perhaps this model can be of help.

To see the model above in bigger size, double-click on it. Download the UK’s “Staying ahead:  the economic performance of the UK’s creative industries”. The study and report was done by the Work Foundation in UK.

The Staying ahead paper is also commented on the Swedish website www.kulturekonomi.se, they comment on the circle model here.

How do world cultures relate to the multifaceted process that we call globalization? Can we achieve greater knowledge and awareness of these issues in our own activities through interdisciplinary thinking and intercultural cooperation? In what way does globalization influence national cultural policy?

These were issued discussed at an interesting seminar with the titel “How big is your world? Cultural Policy and Globalization” a at the Museum of World Culture in Göteborg, Sweden, on April 10th. The seminar was based on the project The Cultures and Globalisation Series, which has resulted in impressive first and second volumes of “Conflict and Tensions” and coming “Cultural Economy“. Several speakers were invited such as Yudhishthir Raj Isar from the American University of Paris; Stefan Jonsson, writer and journalist in Sweden; Mikael Franzén, a Swedish political economist; Chris Waterman from UCLA School of the Arts in Los Angeles; Zala Volcic from the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at University of Queensland and several others.

The first and second volume of “Conflict and Tensions” and some information of the publication is found at the following website: www.princeclausfund.org/en/c_and_d/policy/princeclausfundpublicationconflictandtensions.shtml