Workshopping innovation infrastructures for the Creative and Cultural Industries – ekip at Creative Skills Week

In September, the European Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Policy Platform (ekip) held its first capacity building efforts on infrastructures, innovation and the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) during EU Creative Skills Week in Amsterdam. Our representatives from the University of Edinburgh hosted its first Open Innovation Factory event together with ekip partner Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision (Sound & Vision), on what innovation means for the CCIs. The next day, Sound & Vision built on these discussions with its workshop on the exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of infrastructures for the CCIs at Waag Futurelab. 

From creative skills to creative policy

The University of Edinburgh-led event was titled ‘Creative Skills for Innovation: what, who and how?’ and focused on understanding practitioner attitudes and perceptions of policy and innovation. The event also explored some of the participatory design-led activities and approaches that we will take into the delivery of larger events later in 2024 and into 2025.

During the workshop, participants worked in small groups, facilitated by colleagues from the University of Edinburgh and Sound & Vision, using the whiteboarding tool, Miro. Asynchronous activities were available before the event to support participants to orientate themselves in Miro and in the subject matter. These asked two questions: ‘How connected do you feel to cultural and creative industries (CCIs) policy?’ and ‘What is innovation for you?’ These activities identified a connection between CCI policy and ideas of innovation, and offered some definitions of innovation as arising through collaboration and sometimes unexpected partnerships. One response also identified CCIs as sectors through which language and definitions of innovation could become more open.

In the main part of the workshop, two participatory activities took place. The first focused on skills and jobs in future CCIs, and groups were given imagined job description templates to populate with the skills they thought these roles would require. Responses were detailed in this task and the essential and desirable skills and experiences suggested by each team included digital and data skills; operational skills, business and finance; communications and networking; and strategic and critical skills and mindsets.

The final activity investigated the skill of translating policy into practice, with each team responding to quotes from a range of current CCI policy documents and translating these into their own practice and perspectives. Feedback during the session suggested that workshop attendees found this exercise useful and an interesting starting point for discussions about how CCI policies operate within industries themselves and how closer dialogue between policy and practice might facilitate open innovation.

Imagining new public innovation infrastructures

The following day Sound & Vision teamed up with the University of Edinburgh and Waag Futurelab to host the workshop ‘Skills and Public Infrastructures for Innovation Ecosystems.’ This session invited participants to imagine new forms of public innovation infrastructures that could support CCIs. Why? Well, if we want more diverse CCI players – including hyper-local companies and freelancers from marginalised backgrounds – to be included in innovation ecosystems that focus on solving local societal challenges, we need to create innovation spaces that are welcoming to them. This asks us to expand our definition of innovation infrastructure beyond the usual university labs, incubators or fablabs.

 We began by exploring inspiring and unconventional examples of public innovation infrastructures, such as:

• Mobifree – a European project focused on providing citizens and organisations with access to human-centred and ethical mobile software, promoting digital rights, privacy, and sustainability through open-source technology
• Studio RE:VIVE at Sound & Vision – a free music studio outfitted entirely with equipment designed in the Netherlands, thus paying tribute and reimagining Dutch musical heritage, and 
• Edinburgh Festival Fringe – the three-week open access festival of performance that takes place in venues across Edinburgh each August

During the workshop, participants worked with fictional scenarios and envisioned new innovation infrastructures that could support the needs of local ecosystems. Three groups developed ideas that highlighted a strong desire to build innovation around local community engagement and values: 

• A neighbourhood house that facilitates encounters between CCIs in the public and private sectors, inviting them to practise empathy, local values and storytelling as key innovation skills based on challenges set by citizens from the neighbourhood;
•  A programme of participatory design and futuring workshops and activities – designed by, through and in a regional art museum – to connect communities and support equitable participation.
• An ongoing, interdisciplinary arts festival designed to revitalise the city by connecting its rich industrial heritage and local storytelling to student-led work and community-driven innovation.

As each group presented their ideas for innovation infrastructures, participants were invited to imagine a scenario in five years’ time when the project had failed. Potential pressures included funding structures, local competition and a failure to sustain community engagement. This ‘devil’s advocate’ exercise was a useful tool in developing the ideas further and identifying potential weaknesses to ensure resilience and sustainability in their imagined projects.

Powerful creative connections

Creative collaboration between Sound & Vision and the University of Edinburgh was critical to the success of both events. Sharing ideas, data and feedback from each others’ events has been hugely beneficial as we each create future workshops and continue to develop CCI led research of ekip. Participants across both sessions included arts practitioners, policy makers along with representatives from academic and creative communities, giving us vital insight and inspiration for imagining the future of creative skills in CCIs.

Join our next event Open Innovation Factory: Immersive Technologies on Wednesday 30 October.