The Second Local Stakeholder Group Meeting of Development Finance Institution Altum
On December 7th, 2017 Development Finance Institution Altum (Latvia) held its second regional stakeholder group meeting within the Regional Creative Industries Alliance project.
Representatives of responsible ministries, several regional policy planning institutions, representatives from the education sector, municipalities, business incubators and other market players gathered to be informed about the good practices from other regions involved in the project. A review of these various successful practices initiated interesting discussions on:
- which major elements of creative industry support eco-systems are currently underperforming or missing entirely;
- whether there is a necessity for a creative business centre, district or some other form of physically concentrated (support) infrastructure;
- what forms of financing are difficult to access for creative businesses.
The group agreed that these are the central topics that must be addressed in order to develop fitting new policy initiatives. Also, it is vital to encourage cooperation with other policy development projects. As a good example, on September 4th, 2017 there was a joint meeting of representatives of several Interreg Europe projects implemented in Latvia – RCIA, CRE:HUB, Design4Innovation, SKILLS+, InnoInfraShare, SUPER, RATIO, and ecoRIS3 – to seek for commonalities and potential synergies to achieve greater positive impact for the regional creative industries. Particularly, Development Finance Institution Altum (RCIA) and Latvian University (CRE:HUB) agreed to establish a closer working relationship between both projects in Latvia.
During the stakeholder meeting, Development Finance Institution Altum also presented the interim findings of the ongoing market research and further steps planned for the year 2018 towards development of a new policy instrument for the benefit of regional creative industries.
