Ekip, a consortium of 17 partners comprising universities, cities, and companies, aims to establish a partner and network-driven policy recommendation engine.
Its primary objective is to promote open innovation as the standard while fostering the continuous formulation and adoption of policy development recommendations for Europe's diverse cultural and creative industries (CCIs).
Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth, project manager of ekip at Lund University, has been invited as a keynote speaker at the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU High-Level Conference on Cultural and Creative Industries 12th of July. She highlights the crucial role of cultural and creative competencies in achieving success in the green and digital transition:
“This type of expertise plays a crucial role in creating radically new solutions to complex societal challenges. To achieve radical shifts, such as the transition from fast fashion to slow fashion, a comprehensive approach, and creative competencies are required.”
Ekip will gather policy areas from stakeholders across Europe, prioritise them, and select five per year to be processed through ekip's policy engine. In the engine, formulations are produced, iterated, and tested within partner cities' ecosystems. The ekip observatory will communicate the work conducted, including the resulting policy recommendations as well as recommendations for implementing these policies as to drive innovation in cities' ecosystems.
“We need new policies that enable financing and access to facilities and demonstration labs for different types of projects. The interaction between knowledge, business, research, and society is crucial to solving Europe's complex challenges”, says Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth.
CCIs encompass diverse sectors such as architecture, fashion, design, audiovisual production, cultural heritage, publishing, and visual arts, among others. Recognizing the significant importance of CCIs, the EU highlights their economic contribution, accounting for 4.4% of the EU GDP in 2019 and generating a surplus of over €8.6 billion in exports. CCIs also play a crucial role in job creation, providing 7.6 million jobs, especially for the youth.