Between October 1-5 2018, RCIA’s lead partner, AWS hosted the Polish project partner in Vienna for a staff exchange.
The ensuing discussions centered on:
- Creative Industries Strategy Austria
- Services and Strategies of AWS, KAT, Departure, and Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture Austria
- 8th European Creative Industries Summit 2018
Here’s our Polish partner’s reflections and learnings from the event!
What are the main challenges in your region that you were hoping to address with the staff-exchange?
With reference of the Lublin Development Strategy 2013-2020, Lublin presents proper potential for developing CCI, resulting from the academic and cultural sprit of the city. Academic spirit provides not only highly qualified individuals with different skills and knowledge, but also provides a base of people with high cultural capital, which are, at the same time, the target group for creative industry products. Even though Lublin has great development opportunities, there are also threats and weakness of the creative sector.
The main challenges of the municipality is the existence of many small actors as enterprises or freelancers; Lublin lacks companies which are highly recognizable. Additionally, Lublin has considerably weak infrastructure dedicated to the CCI sector. However, the many different small actions for creative sectors takes place, which are not well coordinated. That is why Lublin needs develop a strategy dedicated to the development of CCI sector which will include financing schemes.
What are the learnings you take home from this Staff Exchange?
- Establish a Creative Industries Board that meets at least twice per year with the mission of monitoring and evaluating development of CCI sector
- Organize CI sectors roundtables with policy partners including public officials representing the municipality as well as the region and the representatives of NGO's.
- Base creative industries strategy on following fields of action and measures: empowerment, transformation, innovation
- Apply a bottom-up approach in the process of building the strategy: from collecting the needs of creatives of each sub-sector to the expert decision about support system.
- Create special financial scheme like creative vouchers
- Do not forget about museums, libraries and archives sectors as an inspirational point for many creatives.
Which of the learnings could also be applied/ transferred to you Region?
Each of the learnings mentioned above are going to be transferred to Lublin. We just have to keep in mind to adjust these solutions to Lublin’s regional situation.
What are the barriers in your Region?
The CCI sector is still relatively young in Lublin region. However, we have a great potential for the development. In order to do that, we need to have clear strategy with allocated financial resources. As the baseline study, there is a need to collect data and to build a mechanism to constantly monitor the situation of the sector. Lack of awareness about the CCIs and their importance is one of the barriers.
