
CREATIVE METROPOLES
NEWSLETTER#5 THE CREATIVE METROPOLES project is entering its’ last year. The core document - Portofolio of good practices from 11 European Metropoles is finished and now available at www.creativemetropoles.eu. Helsinki Exchange event “Evidence based urban policy and creative districts” has been the the platform for the discussions in Helsinki in March this year. You can read more about it below. We are continuing to share the findings of Study visits. Comments from the partners cities - Birmingham, Barcelona, Stockholm and Oslo are in the focus of this newsletter. The 2011 calendar is bursting with cultural exchange events in the European cities! Find out more about coming events of the Creative Metropoles project and other cultural industries related happenings in Europe!
Portofolio of good practices – a handbook for approaches and ideas! How to support creative industries? –A portfolio of good practices from 11 European metropoles - members of the Creative Metropoles project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and Norwegian funding through the INTERREG IVC programme, are now compiled and available to download at www.creativemetropoles.eu. The portfolio of good practices contains altogether 50 examples of support policies for creative industries from 11 European metropoles: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Birmingham, Helsinki, Oslo, Riga, Stockholm, Vilnius, Tallinn and Warsaw. The examples demonstrate the diverse possibilities for developing creative industries encompassing topics from access to finance, increasing business capacity and internationalisation, enhancing demand for creative industries and developing creative spaces and city districts. Külliki Tafel-Viia, representing the Research team and Estonian Institute for Futures Studies, says: “These good practices are not only interesting examples of the kind of support creative industries need, but much more these cases speak about the capacity of creative industries in terms of supporting economic renewal, spatial regeneration and citizens’ involvement in urban development and content generation”. Professor, Dr. Dieter Haselbach - member of the project Research team, underlines: “The variety of good practices indicates that there is no single solution for supporting creative industries, but on the contrary, there are plenty of development possibilities. This situation offers good opportunities for knowledge exchange between the cities and provides a learning arena for creators, business and public sector representatives”. “Based on the multiplicity of practices as well as the overall results of the study, we may conclude that one of the strengths of creative industry policies in European cities is their heterogeneity”, says Robert Marijnissen from University of Amsterdam, “thus, the key to success in developing the creative industry policy lies in finding the most suitable way to combine different approaches and practices”.
Evidence based urban policy&creative districts – Helsinki Experience Exchange event, March 8-10 Delegates from 11 European cities met in Helsinki for the third Experience exchange event in the framework of the Creative Metropoles project, co-financed by the Interreg IVC project. The conference “Evidence Based Urban Policy & Creative Districts” aimed to raise awareness about the impact and role of creative industries on the economic development of cities and showcase the best examples of cooperation between governments, municipalities and creative industries in European cities. The seminar was hosted by the City of Helsinki in cooperation with media agent, Plikka Projects. Among the speakers were the Director of Economic Development for the City of Helsinki Eero Holstila, City of Helsinki Research Director Timo Cantell, Director of Helsinki Design Lab Marco Steinberg, and Movense Ltd. Research Manager Kimmo Ronka and others. Topics discussed during the seminar include evidence based policy making, creative companies and development of creative city districts, as well as a selection of the best creative industry case studies of Berlin, Birmingham, Warsaw, and Tallinn. The second day of the event was based on study visits to the design district in the city center, the Suvilahti and Kalasatama areas around the old harbour, as well as the Arabianranta area and Aalto University. Marisol Lopez from the Catalan Institute for the Cultural Industries (ICIC), the public institution witch supports cultural companies to strengthen the industrial fabric of Catalonia refering to the issues discussed says: "The urban transformation as a strategic element to foster and support the creative industries that are being developed in Helsinki, gives us new inputs on how the creative industries policies are, and should be, closely related to the urban re-developments".
STUDY VISITS - Design of Barcelona In the framework of the Creative Metropoles exchange programme during the second week of June 2010 Barcelona organized a study visit addressing the design-related activities and projects that are being developed in the city. Referring to the activities organized, Berlin city representatives found interesting the funding system for Creative Industries developed by the Catalan Institute for the Cultural Industries (ICIC) –mainly its mixture of grants and loans-, the redevelopment urban strategy of Barcelona and the Art Factories project. Regarding the representatives from Stockholm and the lessons learnt, Monica Slama (Urban Planning Departament, City District Hägersten-Liljeholmen) says that “The visit highlighted the importance of the development of a network (involving assets, broker collaboration and exchange of knowledge between stakeholders and a wider range of partners), articulating the value of creative industries, and the value that the creative industries bring to Stockholm city". Photo by: Barcelonactiva
Approaches to digital futures - Birmingham Study visit In October 2010 Amsterdam, Oslo, Riga and Vilnius visited Birmingham on a study visit organised by Birmingham City University. The three-day programme included insights into the set up of creative spaces, collaborative models in the arts and city approaches to digital futures. The delegates visited several creative spaces and galleries in Eastside, such as the Custard Factory, Fazeley Studios, Vivid, Grand Union and Eastside Projects. The group discussed and exchanged experiences on city district development with local stakeholders in Wolverhampton at Light House Media Centre and took part in the Hello Digital conference in Birmingham. Representatives from Amsterdam city underlined that experiences from the Birmingham visit will support them in finding ways to involve creative entrepreneurs and the Art Schools in the re-development of creative spaces and places throughout Amsterdam.
STUDY VISITS - Creative areas of Oslo In August 2010, Oslo Teknopol hosted a group of experts from Helsinki, Warsaw and Tallinn to share Oslo region’s experience of working with creative industries. Among the 25 participants were city planners, EU project experts, creative incubator representatives and creative entrepreneurs from the partner cities. Each day of the study visit had a different focus. Day 1 was dedicated to creative incubators, co-working collectives and business support practices and participants heard about Idekokeriet creative collective, Ikada – a former creative incubator, Fabrikken – a function incubator in Lillehammer, 0047 – an organization for projects in and in between the fields of art and architecture. Day 2 dealt with the issue of urban planning and creative industries, with a focus on showcasing the development of the areas around Oslo Fjord that has started with the erection of the world acclaimed Norwegian National Opera building but will continue with moving other monumental cultural buildings such as the Munch Museum to the area. The final day 3 was dedicated to the topic of creative industries and city promotion, looking into Oslo’s experience with the Eurovision song contest, the Nobel Peace Centre. Oslo initiatives of bringing together actors in associations of Oslo Music City and Oslo Food City were also showcased. Susa Tulikora from the Helsinki delegation writes: It was really interesting to visit new project sites that have and will have a creative activity. Meeting the artists that are located in those sites opened an extra perspective. The three days of visiting creative Oslo in the point of view of urban planning gave us a waste perspective of the Oslo's future and gave us examples and ideas how to support creative industries in Helsinki. In particular, learning about Brjørvika's development plans, other waterfront developments, cruise tourism and food and music clusters were very interesting and informative.
The FADfest Barcelona team visits Telefonplan in Stockholm The study visit to Stockholm gave the Barcelona FADfest curatorial team (www.fadfest.cat) an overall vision of the creative complex Telefonplan, which hosts educational, business and cultural facilities. FADfest is to be held next summer and will include exhibitions, awards and a debate programme around the culture and practice of design in all of its fields –from graphic to object, fashion and architecture. As curators Albert Martinez and Ivan Pomés say, "Telefonplan, and all the Stockholm Design Week events we could take part in, have given us a great example of a fresh yet well-structured organization as well as a good communication policy". Furthermore, the team points out the excellent level of the several lectures and the accent put on the relational dimension, which let them meet several interesting people and experiences in the orbit of design. As a new way of sharing their experiences, Albert Martinez and Ivan Pomés, created a blog where are collected some of their conclusions and lessons from this visit. Copyright: FAD
DISSEMINATION EVENTS 2011 “MAKING AND SAVING MONEY with OPEN DATA” – Birmingham, April 13 The continued push from national and local governments to release information about their services and performance in Open Data formats creates a significant challenge for Digital and IT companies. The opportunities to innovate around this data and create new services are many, but what are the business models that will sustain such activity? This event hears both from successful data businesses and from those working across the public and private sectors who are helping to make working with Open Data more of an opportunity than a risk. The event, hosted by Birmingham City University, will be of interest to both owners and workers in small to medium companies wishing to engage with this agenda and to public sector managers seeking to develop new digital services that are compelling and engaging. Steve Harding, Head of Policy Development at RIES/Birmingham City University says: "Many companies and policy makers can see the benefits from working with Open Data. They're now looking for practical approaches. This event will give them an opportunity to hear about successful case studies and good practice. Companies and organisations that have successfully developed business models working with Open Data will share their experiences and challenges.”More information.
Amsterdam city inviting to Creative Amsterdam - take your business elsewhere, May 11-13 Mike Shullmeister, the project coordinator from Amsterdam city commenting:“Dutch Creative Masters from all over the world will return home and share their insights on inspiration, cultures, internalization and businesses.We will celebrate the talent and hard work of these successful go-getters with a varied programme: from open design sessions, business dates, export circles to talk shows and an award show. More about the Conference: Creative Amsterdam
The role of cultural institution in the creative economy age – Conference in Riga, May 16-17 Rolands Puhovs, Creative Metropoles project coordinatar from Riga city says: "Interference and synergy among cultural institution and creative industries is one of the essential topics for cities’ policies we are plaming to stress at the Conference. We do see potential in this discussion and are inviting everyone who is related to creative industries or policy issues to join and share the opions”. The programme of the Conference will be available soon on our website.
The closing event of the Creative Metropoles Project – Barcelona, June 14-16th Barcelona is organizing the closing event of the Creative Metropoles project (June 14-16th) in the framework of the Biz Barcelona (three consolidated annual events which joined forces to have a common setting: Day of the Entrepreneur, HITBarcelona, Emprendedor XXI and Tecnio Forum and the last year welcomed more than 12.000 people from more than 65 countries). The Creative Metropoles closing event is being planned to have as many as possible common activities with those projects in order to generate unique and exceptional networking environment between the participants. Accordingly, this closing event is not only aimed to summarize a three year project of researching and experience exchange between cultural institutions and creative industries of partner cities, but also to generate an exceptional opportunity for the participants to share, generate and get new ideas and contacts in the framework of Bizbarcelona. Regarding the BIZBarcelona, Jordi William Cannes, Deputy Mayor of the Barcelona City Council says: “BizBarcelona is a means for the consolidation of the good positioning of the Barcelona brand. We must create the right framework for talented people from here and around the world, decide to start up their business in Barcelona, so that within 10 years we have achieved the goal of being the economic engine of southern Europe”.
The CREAMEDIA program reaches its fourth session CREAMEDIA is a tailor made programme aimed at boosting the development of the creative industries sector, supporting its competitiveness and its global positioning. This programme has been selected as one of the good practices to be included in the Creative Metropoles portfolio. Since November 2010 until May 2011, Barcelona Activa has been developing the fourth edition of the CREAMEDIA programme. Participating in this session 14 entrepreneurship projects that are developing ideas coming from the advertising sector to the industrial design and the creative consultancy services. At the end of this edition a total of 65 creative projects will be coached. About the CREAMEDIA programme, Enrique Frisancho, Industrial engineer, founder partner of TAMBAKUNDA INNODESIGN TANK and participant of one of the previous CREAMEDIA editions says: “I strongly recommend the CREAMEDIA programme of Barcelona Activa. This programme allows you to obtain tangible results in only some weeks. To obtain similar results would have taken us several months or even years if we had worked without their support.
Thought up in Barcelona: The city as a creative environment The series "Thought up in Barcelona” was created with the aim of raising awareness of the entrepreneurs and the companies that think up, create and develop products and services with the Barcelona brand that have achieved success both locally and internationally. This is a collection of various areas and diverse sectors, from both micro and large companies; all examples of innovation that is designed and made in Barcelona, a creative and entrepreneurial city renowned throughout the world. The book has collected more than thirty products or services in the city involving innovations in their respective fields. There are examples of industrial design products which have became icons like the InOut lamp; innovative video art fair Loop, kitchen tools that revolutionized culinary processes like the Lékue products, consolidated architects and young artists internationally known (Alex Trochut or Marc Monzo) and a collection of cases from established brands as Mango or Munich, to entrepreneurs like DDT, winners of an Academy Oscar Award in 2007 for the non-digital special effects makeup of the film "Pan's Labyrinth.". All them born in Barcelona. The second volume of Thought up in Barcelona was launched in March, presented in London and Barcelona, and is available in bookshops.
Barcelona: film set for more than 10 features during the first months of 2011 With the support of the Barcelona-Catalunya Film Commission , during the first three months of 2011, Barcelona has been the film set chosen by more than 10 national and international productions, feature films, miniseries and features made for TV. Among the international productions, the city has held the shooting of Rodrigo Cortes’ upcoming new film Red Lights, a thriller produced by Versus Entertainment with Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver, Cillian Murphy and Elisabeth Olsen, as well as the supernatural film by Darren Lynn Bousman, director of Saw II, III, IV, and 11-11-11. Copyright: Joan Terramon/Barcelona-Filmcommission
Facilitating (social) networking as a policy objective Indrek Ibrus, London School of Economics and Political Science/Tallinn University Baltic Film and Media School Demand for cultural products and its enhancement has been undoubtedly an ambigous theme for the policy makers. Demand is often understood as an unpredictable and unknown variable, better to leave to the market and businesses to figure out. And the latter, then, are what the local authorities tend to support and facilitate – production and supply but not consumption and demand. There is a penumbra of support mechanisms in place in cities all over Europe that support the many well defined institutional forms of ‘creative production’. The picture is much more lacking, however, when it comes to facilitating demand for products of aesthetic or entertainment value – with an exception of ‘percentage for arts programmes’ now standardised and in place in an increasing number of countries. However, the demand issue has been further complicated by the accelerating user and audience empowerment reflected by the emergence of the concepts such as ‘produsage’, ‘prosumption’, ‘user-driven-innovation’ and the like.These refer that in case of creative industries it is consumers, users and audiences that, through their activities in markets, not only constitute the demand for the cultural products, but, in effect, are a core source of the dynamics that facilitate the modern ‘creative industries’ as a social, economic and cultural phenomenon. The latter realisation has been specifically emphasised by the work done in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation in Brisbane, Australia. Perhaps the most intriguing of their propositions is their concept of social network markets – a market based redefinition of ‘creative industries’ (see Potts, Cunningham, Hartley, & Ormerod, 2008). What they suggest with this, firstly, is that creative industries should be understood as an emergent market economy rather than an industrial one. What derives from this is that with CIs the central economic concern should not be with the nature of inputs and outputs in production or consumption or even with competitive structures, but with the nature of the markets that coordinate this industry. And what are these markets and their mechanisms of coordination, then, like? Read more.
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CREATIVE METROPOLES

NEWSLETTER#5

THE CREATIVE METROPOLES project is entering its’ last year. The core document - Portofolio of good practices from 11 European Metropoles is finished and now available at www.creativemetropoles.eu.
Helsinki Exchange event “Evidence based urban policy and creative districts” has been the the platform for the discussions in Helsinki in March this year. You can read more about it below.
We are continuing to share the findings of Study visits. Comments from the partners cities - Birmingham, Barcelona, Stockholm and Oslo are in the focus of this newsletter.

The 2011 calendar is bursting with cultural exchange events in the European cities! Find out more about coming events of the Creative Metropoles project and other cultural industries related happenings in Europe!

Portofolio of good practices – a handbook for approaches and ideas!

How to support creative industries? –A portfolio of good practices from 11 European metropoles - members of the Creative Metropoles project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and Norwegian funding through the INTERREG IVC programme, are now compiled and available to download at www.creativemetropoles.eu.

The portfolio of good practices contains altogether 50 examples of support policies for creative industries from 11 European metropoles: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Birmingham, Helsinki, Oslo, Riga, Stockholm, Vilnius, Tallinn and Warsaw. The examples demonstrate the diverse possibilities for developing creative industries encompassing topics from access to finance, increasing business capacity and internationalisation, enhancing demand for creative industries and developing creative spaces and city districts.

Külliki Tafel-Viia, representing the Research team and Estonian Institute for Futures Studies, says: “These good practices are not only interesting examples of the kind of support creative industries need, but much more these cases speak about the capacity of creative industries in terms of supporting economic renewal, spatial regeneration and citizens’ involvement in urban development and content generation”.

Professor, Dr. Dieter Haselbach - member of the project Research team, underlines: “The variety of good practices indicates that there is no single solution for supporting creative industries, but on the contrary, there are plenty of development possibilities. This situation offers good opportunities for knowledge exchange between the cities and provides a learning arena for creators, business and public sector representatives”.

“Based on the multiplicity of practices as well as the overall results of the study, we may conclude that one of the strengths of creative industry policies in European cities is their heterogeneity”, says Robert Marijnissen from University of Amsterdam, “thus, the key to success in developing the creative industry policy lies in finding the most suitable way to combine different approaches and practices”.

Evidence based urban policy&creative districts – Helsinki Experience Exchange event, March 8-10

Delegates from 11 European cities met in Helsinki for the third Experience exchange event in the framework of the Creative Metropoles project, co-financed by the Interreg IVC project. The conference “Evidence Based Urban Policy & Creative Districts” aimed to raise awareness about the impact and role of creative industries on the economic development of cities and showcase the best examples of cooperation between governments, municipalities and creative industries in European cities.

The seminar was hosted by the City of Helsinki in cooperation with media agent, Plikka Projects. Among the speakers were the Director of Economic Development for the City of Helsinki Eero Holstila, City of Helsinki Research Director Timo Cantell, Director of Helsinki Design Lab Marco Steinberg, and Movense Ltd. Research Manager Kimmo Ronka and others. Topics discussed during the seminar include evidence based policy making, creative companies and development of creative city districts, as well as a selection of the best creative industry case studies of Berlin, Birmingham, Warsaw, and Tallinn. The second day of the event was based on study visits to the design district in the city center, the Suvilahti and Kalasatama areas around the old harbour, as well as the Arabianranta area and Aalto University.

Marisol Lopez from the Catalan Institute for the Cultural Industries (ICIC), the public institution witch supports cultural companies to strengthen the industrial fabric of Catalonia refering to the issues discussed says: "The urban transformation as a strategic element to foster and support the creative industries that are being developed in Helsinki, gives us new inputs on how the creative industries policies are, and should be, closely related to the urban re-developments".

STUDY VISITS - Design of Barcelona

In the framework of the Creative Metropoles exchange programme during the second week of June 2010 Barcelona organized a study visit addressing the design-related activities and projects that are being developed in the city. Referring to the activities organized, Berlin city representatives found interesting the funding system for Creative Industries developed by the Catalan Institute for the Cultural Industries (ICIC) –mainly its mixture of grants and loans-, the redevelopment urban strategy of Barcelona and the Art Factories project.

Regarding the representatives from Stockholm and the lessons learnt, Monica Slama (Urban Planning Departament, City District Hägersten-Liljeholmen) says that “The visit highlighted the importance of the development of a network (involving assets, broker collaboration and exchange of knowledge between stakeholders and a wider range of partners), articulating the value of creative industries, and the value that the creative industries bring to Stockholm city".

Photo by: Barcelonactiva

Approaches to digital futures - Birmingham Study visit

In October 2010 Amsterdam, Oslo, Riga and Vilnius visited Birmingham on a study visit organised by Birmingham City University. The three-day programme included insights into the set up of creative spaces, collaborative models in the arts and city approaches to digital futures. The delegates visited several creative spaces and galleries in Eastside, such as the Custard Factory, Fazeley Studios, Vivid, Grand Union and Eastside Projects.

The group discussed and exchanged experiences on city district development with local stakeholders in Wolverhampton at Light House Media Centre and took part in the Hello Digital conference in Birmingham. Representatives from Amsterdam city underlined that experiences from the Birmingham visit will support them in finding ways to involve creative entrepreneurs and the Art Schools in the re-development of creative spaces and places throughout Amsterdam.

STUDY VISITS - Creative areas of Oslo

In August 2010, Oslo Teknopol hosted a group of experts from Helsinki, Warsaw and Tallinn to share Oslo region’s experience of working with creative industries. Among the 25 participants were city planners, EU project experts, creative incubator representatives and creative entrepreneurs from the partner cities.

Each day of the study visit had a different focus. Day 1 was dedicated to creative incubators, co-working collectives and business support practices and participants heard about Idekokeriet creative collective, Ikada – a former creative incubator, Fabrikken – a function incubator in Lillehammer, 0047 – an organization for projects in and in between the fields of art and architecture. Day 2 dealt with the issue of urban planning and creative industries, with a focus on showcasing the development of the areas around Oslo Fjord that has started with the erection of the world acclaimed Norwegian National Opera building but will continue with moving other monumental cultural buildings such as the Munch Museum to the area. The final day 3 was dedicated to the topic of creative industries and city promotion, looking into Oslo’s experience with the Eurovision song contest, the Nobel Peace Centre. Oslo initiatives of bringing together actors in associations of Oslo Music City and Oslo Food City were also showcased.
Susa Tulikora from the Helsinki delegation writes:
It was really interesting to visit new project sites that have and will have a creative activity. Meeting the artists that are located in those sites opened an extra perspective. The three days of visiting creative Oslo in the point of view of urban planning gave us a waste perspective of the Oslo's future and gave us examples and ideas how to support creative industries in Helsinki. In particular, learning about Brjørvika's development plans, other waterfront developments, cruise tourism and food and music clusters were very interesting and informative.

The FADfest Barcelona team visits Telefonplan in Stockholm

The study visit to Stockholm gave the Barcelona FADfest curatorial team (www.fadfest.cat) an overall vision of the creative complex Telefonplan, which hosts educational, business and cultural facilities. FADfest is to be held next summer and will include exhibitions, awards and a debate programme around the culture and practice of design in all of its fields –from graphic to object, fashion and architecture. As curators Albert Martinez and Ivan Pomés say, "Telefonplan, and all the Stockholm Design Week events we could take part in, have given us a great example of a fresh yet well-structured organization as well as a good communication policy". Furthermore, the team points out the excellent level of the several lectures and the accent put on the relational dimension, which let them meet several interesting people and experiences in the orbit of design.

As a new way of sharing their experiences, Albert Martinez and Ivan Pomés, created a blog where are collected some of their conclusions and lessons from this visit.

Copyright: FAD

DISSEMINATION EVENTS 2011

“MAKING AND SAVING MONEY with OPEN DATA” – Birmingham, April 13
The continued push from national and local governments to release information about their services and performance in Open Data formats creates a significant challenge for Digital and IT companies. The opportunities to innovate around this data and create new services are many, but what are the business models that will sustain such activity? This event hears both from successful data businesses and from those working across the public and private sectors who are helping to make working with Open Data more of an opportunity than a risk.

The event, hosted by Birmingham City University, will be of interest to both owners and workers in small to medium companies wishing to engage with this agenda and to public sector managers seeking to develop new digital services that are compelling and engaging.
Steve Harding, Head of Policy Development at RIES/Birmingham City University says: "Many companies and policy makers can see the benefits from working with Open Data. They're now looking for practical approaches. This event will give them an opportunity to hear about successful case studies and good practice. Companies and organisations that have successfully developed business models working with Open Data will share their experiences and challenges.”More information.

Amsterdam city inviting to Creative Amsterdam - take your business elsewhere, May 11-13

Mike Shullmeister, the project coordinator from Amsterdam city commenting:“Dutch Creative Masters from all over the world will return home and share their insights on inspiration, cultures, internalization and businesses.We will celebrate the talent and hard work of these successful go-getters with a varied programme: from open design sessions, business dates, export circles to talk shows and an award show. More about the Conference: Creative Amsterdam

The role of cultural institution in the creative economy age – Conference in Riga, May 16-17

Rolands Puhovs, Creative Metropoles project coordinatar from Riga city says: "Interference and synergy among cultural institution and creative industries is one of the essential topics for cities’ policies we are plaming to stress at the Conference. We do see potential in this discussion and are inviting everyone who is related to creative industries or policy issues to join and share the opions”. The programme of the Conference will be available soon on our website.

The closing event of the Creative Metropoles Project – Barcelona, June 14-16th

Barcelona is organizing the closing event of the Creative Metropoles project (June 14-16th) in the framework of the Biz Barcelona (three consolidated annual events which joined forces to have a common setting: Day of the Entrepreneur, HITBarcelona, Emprendedor XXI and Tecnio Forum and the last year welcomed more than 12.000 people from more than 65 countries).
The Creative Metropoles closing event is being planned to have as many as possible common activities with those projects in order to generate unique and exceptional networking environment between the participants. Accordingly, this closing event is not only aimed to summarize a three year project of researching and experience exchange between cultural institutions and creative industries of partner cities, but also to generate an exceptional opportunity for the participants to share, generate and get new ideas and contacts in the framework of Bizbarcelona.

Regarding the BIZBarcelona, Jordi William Cannes, Deputy Mayor of the Barcelona City Council says: “BizBarcelona is a means for the consolidation of the good positioning of the Barcelona brand. We must create the right framework for talented people from here and around the world, decide to start up their business in Barcelona, so that within 10 years we have achieved the goal of being the economic engine of southern Europe”.

The CREAMEDIA program reaches its fourth session

CREAMEDIA is a tailor made programme aimed at boosting the development of the creative industries sector, supporting its competitiveness and its global positioning. This programme has been selected as one of the good practices to be included in the Creative Metropoles portfolio.
Since November 2010 until May 2011, Barcelona Activa has been developing the fourth edition of the CREAMEDIA programme. Participating in this session 14 entrepreneurship projects that are developing ideas coming from the advertising sector to the industrial design and the creative consultancy services. At the end of this edition a total of 65 creative projects will be coached.

About the CREAMEDIA programme, Enrique Frisancho, Industrial engineer, founder partner of TAMBAKUNDA INNODESIGN TANK and participant of one of the previous CREAMEDIA editions says: “I strongly recommend the CREAMEDIA programme of Barcelona Activa. This programme allows you to obtain tangible results in only some weeks. To obtain similar results would have taken us several months or even years if we had worked without their support.

Thought up in Barcelona: The city as a creative environment

The series "Thought up in Barcelona” was created with the aim of raising awareness of the entrepreneurs and the companies that think up, create and develop products and services with the Barcelona brand that have achieved success both locally and internationally. This is a collection of various areas and diverse sectors, from both micro and large companies; all examples of innovation that is designed and made in Barcelona, a creative and entrepreneurial city renowned throughout the world.

The book has collected more than thirty products or services in the city involving innovations in their respective fields. There are examples of industrial design products which have became icons like the InOut lamp; innovative video art fair Loop, kitchen tools that revolutionized culinary processes like the Lékue products, consolidated architects and young artists internationally known (Alex Trochut or Marc Monzo) and a collection of cases from established brands as Mango or Munich, to entrepreneurs like DDT, winners of an Academy Oscar Award in 2007 for the non-digital special effects makeup of the film "Pan's Labyrinth.". All them born in Barcelona.
The second volume of Thought up in Barcelona was launched in March, presented in London and Barcelona, and is available in bookshops.

Barcelona: film set for more than 10 features during the first months of 2011

With the support of the Barcelona-Catalunya Film Commission , during the first three months of 2011, Barcelona has been the film set chosen by more than 10 national and international productions, feature films, miniseries and features made for TV. Among the international productions, the city has held the shooting of Rodrigo Cortes’ upcoming new film Red Lights, a thriller produced by Versus Entertainment with Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver, Cillian Murphy and Elisabeth Olsen, as well as the supernatural film by Darren Lynn Bousman, director of Saw II, III, IV, and 11-11-11.

Copyright: Joan Terramon/Barcelona-Filmcommission

Facilitating (social) networking as a policy objective

Indrek Ibrus, London School of Economics and Political Science/Tallinn University Baltic Film and Media School

Demand for cultural products and its enhancement has been undoubtedly an ambigous theme for the policy makers. Demand is often understood as an unpredictable and unknown variable, better to leave to the market and businesses to figure out. And the latter, then, are what the local authorities tend to support and facilitate – production and supply but not consumption and demand. There is a penumbra of support mechanisms in place in cities all over Europe that support the many well defined institutional forms of ‘creative production’. The picture is much more lacking, however, when it comes to facilitating demand for products of aesthetic or entertainment value – with an exception of ‘percentage for arts programmes’ now standardised and in place in an increasing number of countries. However, the demand issue has been further complicated by the accelerating user and audience empowerment reflected by the emergence of the concepts such as ‘produsage’, ‘prosumption’, ‘user-driven-innovation’ and the like.These refer that in case of creative industries it is consumers, users and audiences that, through their activities in markets, not only constitute the demand for the cultural products, but, in effect, are a core source of the dynamics that facilitate the modern ‘creative industries’ as a social, economic and cultural phenomenon.
The latter realisation has been specifically emphasised by the work done in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation in Brisbane, Australia. Perhaps the most intriguing of their propositions is their concept of social network markets – a market based redefinition of ‘creative industries’ (see Potts, Cunningham, Hartley, & Ormerod, 2008). What they suggest with this, firstly, is that creative industries should be understood as an emergent market economy rather than an industrial one. What derives from this is that with CIs the central economic concern should not be with the nature of inputs and outputs in production or consumption or even with competitive structures, but with the nature of the markets that coordinate this industry. And what are these markets and their mechanisms of coordination, then, like? Read more.