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

Photo: Emma Pirie

From Creative Skills to Creative Policy

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. Representatives from the University of Edinburgh hosted the first Open Innovation Factory event together with ekip partner Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, focusing on what innovation means for CCIs. The following day, Sound & Vision continued the discussion with a workshop at Waag Futurelab, exploring strengths and weaknesses of innovation infrastructures for CCIs.

The University of Edinburgh-led event, Creative Skills for Innovation: what, who and how?, focused on practitioner attitudes and perceptions of policy and innovation. The session introduced participatory, design-led approaches that will be used in larger ekip events throughout 2024 and 2025.

Participants worked in small groups using the Miro whiteboarding tool, supported by asynchronous pre-event activities. These activities explored participants’ connections to CCI policy and their understanding of innovation, highlighting collaboration, unexpected partnerships and CCIs as spaces where definitions of innovation can expand.

Two participatory activities followed. The first focused on future skills and jobs in CCIs, using fictional job descriptions to identify essential and desirable skills such as digital and data literacy, business and finance, communication, networking and strategic thinking. The second activity explored translating policy into practice by interpreting real policy documents through practitioners’ perspectives, sparking discussion on bridging policy and industry practice.

Imagining New Public Innovation Infrastructures

The following day, Sound & Vision, the University of Edinburgh and Waag Futurelab hosted the workshop Skills and Public Infrastructures for Innovation Ecosystems. Participants were invited to imagine new forms of public innovation infrastructure that could better support CCIs, particularly hyper-local actors, freelancers and marginalized groups.

The workshop challenged traditional definitions of innovation infrastructure by presenting alternative examples, including:

• Mobifree, a European project promoting ethical and open-source mobile software
• Studio RE:VIVE at Sound & Vision, a free music studio celebrating Dutch musical heritage
• Edinburgh Festival Fringe, an open-access performance festival embedded across the city
  

Working with fictional scenarios, participants developed concepts for innovation infrastructures rooted in community engagement and local values. These included a neighborhood-based innovation house, participatory museum-led programs, and an interdisciplinary arts festival connecting heritage, education and community innovation.

A “devil’s advocate” exercise asked participants to imagine failure scenarios five years into the future, addressing risks such as funding challenges, competition and sustaining community engagement. This helped strengthen the resilience and feasibility of the proposed infrastructures.

Powerful Creative Connections

Collaboration between Sound & Vision and the University of Edinburgh was central to the success of both events. Sharing insights, data and participant feedback supported the development of future Open Innovation Factory workshops and contributed to ekip’s ongoing research into CCI-led innovation.

Participants included cultural practitioners, policymakers, academics and creative professionals, providing valuable perspectives on the future of creative skills and innovation ecosystems in Europe.

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