Innovation is at the heart of the New European Agenda 2018-2021 and European Creative Industries Summit 2018 welcomes leading policy makers with Margarete Schramböck, Federal Minister for Digital and Economic Affairs, Austria, Tibor Navracsics, EU Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport and Christian Ehler, MEP, Co-Chair of Intergroup Cultural Creative Industries to focus the innovation potentials and policies for one of the largest and most successful industries in Europe – the Cultural Creative Industries with 12 million full-time jobs, which amounts to 7.5 % of the EU’s work force, and approx. EUR 509 billion in value added to GDP.

In 2016 the European Parliament recognized the value added of cultural creative industries in its report “on a coherent EU policy for cultural and creative industries”. Many projects and programs across Europe and in Horizon 2020 started to finance cross-innovation projects related to the creative industries. These first successes however also show that a piece-meal approach to creative industries is not sufficient to create societal and industrial relevant impact for the future of Europe. It is high time – for the best of Europe – to move from piloting projects to mainstreaming the benefits of creative industries as driver for cross-innovation for the economic and social benefit of Europe.

In January 2018 the European Innovation Council points out to „avoid a “one size fits all” and target market failures and EU added value with a focus on transformative, breakthrough science leading to market-creating innovations and scaling-up highly innovative firms. These often take shape at the intersection between different technologies, business sectors and scientific disciplines.“

Now BEYOND aims to do the next step to support cross-innovation policies and funding for the cultural creative industries in the next funding period. The conference focuses on growth areas of cross-innovation where creative industries will have an industrial impact and drives growth and well-being for the whole of Europe. Especially at the interface of creative industries and digital technologies, both break-through and incremental innovations can effectively be supported. The range of possible applications is manyfold, for instance in health, mobility, green economy and smart cities.

Experts

BEYOND welcomes experienced experts and decision makers for the creative industries such as Prof. Dieter Gorny, Director european centre for creative industries, Prof. Pier Luigi Sacco, Special Adviser to the EU-Commission on Culture Heritage, Ugo Bacchella, President of Fitzcarraldo Fondazione, Bart Ahsmann, Director of the Dutch innovation agency, CLICK.NL, Eberhard Schrempf, Director of CIS and Caroline Norbury MBE, CEO of Creative England, the largest public creative industries agency in Europe.

BEYOND is not just another conference, but part of the program of the Austrian EU-Presidency in collaboration with and with sponsoring by Kreativwirtschaft Austria (KAT) and the European Centre for Creative Economy (ecce). Its result will be documented and proposed to the European Council and European Commission to set up cross-innovation support policies for the cultural creative industries within Horizon Europe.

Registration

Registration for the conference will start in June. The full program will be published on ECBN webpage and regularly updated.
ECIS 2018 is organized by ECBN and supported by Kreativwirtschaft Austria (KAT), the European Centre for Creative Economy (ecce), and the Austrian Presidency of the EU 2018.