European Community

EIT Culture&Creativity, culture-based innovation becomes reality

It promotes partnerships formed by companies and research organisations to tackle EU challenges. First winning consortium led by the German Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft institute with 50 partners, including Fondazione Cariplo, ARTER, Fondazione Fitzcarraldo, CNR, MateraHub and ETT spa, the IULM in Milan and the University of Bologna

by Roberta Capozucca

19 September 2024

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After some delays at the starting blocks, it seems that the EIT Culture & Creativity is finally ready to kick off. Considered by many to be the closing of the circle of a decade of international cultural policies, its establishment represents the materialisation of the theories of culture-based innovation, according to which the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) have the potential to drive sustainable development, contribute to social cohesion and the triple transition (energy-environmental-digital), while accelerating creative, competitive and resilient entrepreneurship.

What is EIT Culture&Creativity?

Established in 2022 by the European Institute of Technology - EIT, the EIT Culture & Creativity represents the newest of the nine Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) of the European Union, i.e. large partnerships of companies and research organisations committed to tackling the Union's most pressing challenges. Chosen through an open selection process, the Culture&Creativity KIC partnership brings together a broad spectrum of companies and organisations from the cultural and creative sectors around a shared mission: to unlock the latent value of CCIs to contribute to Europe's economic and social growth. As stated in the articles of association of the winning consortium, the one led by the German institute Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and composed of more than 50 European partners, including Fondazione Cariplo, ARTER, Fondazione Fitzcarraldo, CNR, MateraHub and ETT spa, the IULM in Milan and the University of Bologna: "the EIT Culture & Creativity is a Knowledge and Innovation Community that brings together creative people from all fields to rethink the way we live as Europeans. This includes rethinking the way we currently run our economic sectors and empowering creatives to transform them according to their vision of green and digital transitions'.

The EIT Culture & Creativity complements the work of the EIT with a new instrument, joining the eight existing institutes that have been established since 2008. They are: the EIT Climate, committed to accelerating the transition to a carbon-neutral economy, the EIT Digital dedicated to driving digital transformation, theEIT Food committed to reorganising the food production chain, the EIT Health committed to promoting a healthy lifestyle and making it more accessible, theEIT InnoEnergy aiming at realising a sustainable energy future, the EIT Manufacturing aiming at strengthening the competitiveness of the European manufacturing industry, the EIT Raw Materials aiming at promoting the sustainability of the minerals, metals and raw materials sector and the EIT Urban Mobility aiming at promoting more liveable urban spaces also through mobility.

How EIT Culture&Creativity works

The EIT Culture & Creativity is funded through the European Union's Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon Europe with a total budget of approximately 300 million euro over the next 14 years. Since its establishment, the new KIC has received a grant of 6 million euros to flesh out the complex organisational structure of the EIT Culture&Creativity, define its strategic directions and build the business plan that the institute was supposed to implement as of 1 January 2024, when the KIC was expected to become operational. However, despite the tight schedule, the start-up of the EIT Culture & Creativity was postponed due to the EIT's failure to approve the Strategic Agenda 2024-2027, which forced the board to partially revise its mission and directions to ensure the new institute's long-term financial sustainability. Indeed, the operating model of all EITs envisages a gradual decrease in funding from European programmes, from 100% in the first four years to 0% by the 15th year. This decrease is expected to be compensated both through the new partnerships that the institute is required to develop and through an articulated financial return mechanism, based on shares and revenue fees from the funded projects.

After a series of postponements, the Strategic Agenda of the EIT Culture & Creativity was finally approved at the end of July 2024, marking the actual start of this important institute, considered to be one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken at European level for the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI).

Strategic Directions 2024-2027

While sharing with the other KICs the general objectives of the EIT which are research, education and innovation, the specific mission of the EIT Culture & Creativity is to enhance and nurture a sustainable innovation ecosystem through interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration, while addressing the socio-economic challenges of the sector. Specifically, it will focus on the sub-sectors of fashion, architecture, cultural heritage, media and gaming, which together account for about 10% of the EU's revenues with a total of9 million workers involved. To pursue its mission, the EIT Culture & Creativity has identified three macro-challenges on which it will focus its efforts until at least 2027. These challenges aim to strengthen the competitiveness of the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) and, at the same time, to achieve the objectives of innovation and hybridisation set out in its founding act. The challenges are:

- Lack of appropriate skills for future labour markets, specifically entrepreneurial, digital and green skills.

- Lack of ability to recognise innovation models capable of having a positive social and economic impact.

- Difficulties in accelerating and scaling CCI market opportunities to compete globally.

The new EIT on culture, why now?

At a time of increasing uncertainty, which threatens to undermine democratic stability and the European industrial fabric, the EIT's investment in the cultural and creative sectors aims to offer new perspectives to understand the present and imagine the future. For the sector, the creation of a dedicated EIT represents a unique opportunity for organic growth, with the possibility of benefiting, for once, from substantial resources spread over a continuous period of almost 15 years.

In conclusion, it is worth mentioning that the creation of the EIT is the culmination of a decade-long journey that has led to growing European recognition of the transformative potential of culture and the creative sectors, both economically and politically. Started with the publication in 2011 of the Green Paper on cultural and creative industries "Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries", this path received an acceleration in 2018, first with the publication of the New European Agenda for Culture, the European Commission's long-term policy document that affirmed the importance of the sector in its value and economic dimensions, and then with the proclamation of the European Heritage Year, which brought the sector's issues closer to public opinion. Although there is still a long way to go, the establishment of the EIT Culture&Creativity marks a turning point in EU policies, definitively recognising the central role that cultural and creative industries play.

If difficult times lie on the horizon, made up of compromises between geopolitical demands, the search for new welfare models, labour shortages to manage ecological and digital transitions, shrinking available resources and the erosion of social cohesion, the EIT presents itself as a powerful tool to legitimise the cultural and creative sectors in responding to these challenges. We just have to ask ourselves: will professionals and companies in the sector be able to seize this extraordinary opportunity?

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