Linking networks together

In December Jeroen van der Aa from TU Delft, an ekip partner, was invited by Dutch Culture for presenting ekip during their EU Funding Marathon webinar. Dutch Culture is the network and knowledge organisation for international cultural cooperation supporting the Dutch cultural and creative sector and public authorities. 

“Objective of the presentation was to create awareness in the Dutch cultural and creative sector about ekip, what ekip can do for the sector and how they can connect with ekip. The creation of the ekip proposal also served as case-study for the dynamics to take into account when developing a Horizon Europe project”, says Jeroen van der Aa.

In a discussion with the Dutch Enterprise Agency (NCP for Horizon Europe), the Creative Europe Desk and Waag Society it became clear that the National Contact Points for the European Funding programs have challenges in reaching out to the Cultural and Creative Industries. As most of organisations in the CCIs are SMEs, the threshold for participating in European Programs is often regarded too high.

“Also they do not always have access to partners in the networks being active in the European Programs like Universities. The Cascade Funding model could however be a very interesting instrument specifically for this sector. But a centralised overview of available Cascade Funding opportunities for CCIs is currently lacking, which could be brought up by ekip to the European Commission”, Jeroen van der Aa explains.

A follow up meeting with the Dutch Enterprise Agency and Creative Europe Desk will be planned to discuss how they can contribute to ekip and how they can link their Dutch CCI networks.

The recording of the EU Funding Marathon webinar is available online: https://dutchculture.nl/en/node/1667878