BackSuccessful pilot event for promoting culture and the creative industries in the Baltic Sea Region
The creative and cultural industries in the Baltic Sea Region contribute to 4.2 % of Europe’s GDP. To make the most of these assets, and for the potential of economic growth and employment, it is essential to promote the region’s culture and creative industries. The Policy Area Culture promotes the Baltic Sea Region’s cultural and creative industry and encourages creative entrepreneurship.
Pilot for a regular Culture Forum within the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region
In 2024, Policy Area Culture, together with its partners ARS BALTICA, the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre, the CCI Contact Desk and Goyki 3 Art Inkubator, co-hosted the first edition of the InnoCulture Conference as a pilot for a regular Culture Forum within the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. With over 60 participants from around the Baltic Sea Region exploring culture’s innovative potential, a base for further development was successfully established.
The InnoCulture Conference was hosted as a lunch-to-lunch event at the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre in Gdańsk, Poland. After exploring the city on guided walks around the old town and shipyard, this history-rich event location began buzzing with life as the over 60 participants started arriving and networking over delicious food. The conference programme commenced at noon with a so-called ‘Speed Networking’ lead by ARS BALTICA, allowing people to meet new acquaintances and get the innovative mindset flowing.
Inese Suija-Markova, Deputy Mayor of Cēsis Municipality and Deputy Chair of Vidzeme Planning Region Development Board, held her speech on the topic ‘The Missing Palette: Why Innovation Needs Art and Culture’. She highlighted the five superpowers that only culture as a sector could unite:
- Spark curiosity
- Unleash creativity
- Nurture compassion
- Create commonality
- Celebrate humanity
She continued by stating that Curiosity, Creativity and Compassion (Empathy) being the essential preconditions of innovation, meaning invention and implementation creating value. Apart from giving practical examples, she went on to challenge the myth, stating that it takes a genius or lone innovator to develop innovation. On the contrary, so she explained:
The second keynote speaker of the day, Krista Petäjäjärvi, an expert in arts-based innovations on multiple levels, one being her position at the Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture – NDPC Secretariat in Riga, added to this notion following the topic ‘Art in Innovation: Why should we care?’ She began by giving research-based proof for the importance of art for innovation. For example, within the framing of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is stated that artists, cultural professionals and policy makers are drivers of innovative partnerships. She further elaborated that trend research from 2023 shows many artists and creatives seeking ways to expand their practices to work for positive societal change, and a vital part of achieving this follows the concept of ‘Creative Cross-Innovation’. In this collaborative process where professionals from the arts, culture and creative fields share their expertise, methods, as well as creative approaches and ‘cross-over’ in unseen ways to other sectors and industries of society, the success factors are:
- Eye-level collaboration of artists/creatives with professionals from other fields
- A joint mission with a clear reason for the collaboration
- Artistic/creative expertise plays an essential role and is included in the foundations of the process
- Novel unseen formats of cross-disciplinary collaboration processes
This is just the beginning
The first edition of the InnoCulture Conference was a success in terms of bringing people together and highlighting the potential of the creative and cultural industries. While there is still more potential to unlock, with more cross-sectoral exchange being only one of many aspects, this conference has set the stage for meaningful growth and collaboration in the future. The organisers see the added value of the InnoCulture Conference and will seek to turn the Conference into an annual event.
