Europe has the pieces. In Eindhoven, ekip shows how to connect them.

ekip

On 23 October, during Dutch Design Week, three years of European work on the cultural and creative industries changes hands 

October 1st, 2026 – The argument about whether the cultural and creative industries matter to Europe has been settled. The Culture Compass set the direction, and in June the Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission signed a joint declaration committing the institutions to embedding culture across EU policies and funding. The harder question is the one that comes next, and it is the question ekip has spent more than three years working on: how do you actually put creative people and creative companies to work inside Europe’s innovation systems, in a way that lasts beyond a single project or a single funding round? 

On the morning of 23 October, at NatLab in Eindhoven, ekip hands over its answer. 

The finding that shaped the work is easier to state than to solve. Europe is not short of capability. It has creative talent, the research base, the industry, the cities and regions, the institutions, the infrastructure, and the knowledge. What it needs now is to make those things work together. The pieces exist; the connections between them do not, or they exist only where somebody has built them by hand, in one city, for one project, for as long as the funding lasts. 

Over three years, ekip moved from naming that problem to doing something about it. It ran policy labs with real ecosystems, tested methods in cities, interviewed practitioners, built an Academy where teams arrived with live policy challenges, and produced tools that other people can pick up and use. In May, in Brussels, it put five strategic recommendations to European institutions. Since then, the conversation has moved from what needs to change to how change happens. 

A working session 

The morning of 23 October is deliberately not a retrospective. It is a working session about how an innovation policy platform creates value and competitiveness for Europe, and about who carries each part of it forward once ekip’s funded life ends. After a keynote on how the cultural and creative industries contribute to European competitiveness, three panels take ekip’s findings and test them against the conditions in which they would have to work, with policymakers, creative professionals, platform leaders and academics in the same room. 

The first panel, Passing the baton: from declaration to delivery, looks at the machinery that turns political mandate into standing practice, and at how the work travels from one Presidency to the next. The second, Universities as ecosystem builders, asks what fourth-generation universities can realistically host over the long term and what has to sit elsewhere. The third, The roles that don’t exist yet, start from ten new roles ekip identified in practice, and from the fact that job titles, funding lines and qualifications have not caught up with the people already doing that work. 

The conversation draws on places where this has already been attempted: Breda, where a Dutch ecosystem is working to integrate the creative industries structurally; the Basque Country, which shows what longer-term ecosystem development looks like; fashion and textiles across Lund, Milan and Rotterdam, where policy has moved into portfolio approaches and city prototyping; and performing arts in Tampere and Stockholm, two local routes towards the same ambition. 

Why this October 

The timing is not incidental. The legal texts and governance of the next generation of European programmes are still being written, and the terms on which the cultural and creative industries sit inside them are still being settled. Decisions taken in the coming months will determine whether the sector is written into the structure of European innovation policy or attached to the edge of it again. 

The five recommendations ekip presented in Brussels are: to integrate and embed the cultural and creative industries structurally across the upcoming EU programmes, horizontally and vertically; to break down policy silos and strengthen cross-policy approaches; to redesign innovation ecosystems around open innovation, built for how the creative industries actually work; to shift to funding models that integrate creativity and innovation through portfolio-based financing, with intermediaries acting as orchestrators; and to build a long-term European foresight capacity so that innovation policy for the sector stays ahead of the curve. 

What people take away 

Everyone in the room leaves with the full body of work, and all of it is free to use, adapt and cite: the recommendations, the mapping of national creative industry strategies across Europe, the building blocks that set out what a functioning ecosystem requires, the ten emerging roles, the tested methods for policy labs and city prototyping, and the Knowledge Bank behind all of it. 

They also leave with the people. The consortium behind ekip includes five universities, four cultural and innovation consultancies, four cultural and creative organisations, four cities and more than fifty network organisations. The networking lunch runs until 13:30, and the conversation continues into the afternoon at CreativeNL Live with ClickNL. 

The morning is built for five groups, each with a different reason to be there: European and national policy carriers who can move recommendations into policy; cities and regional ecosystem leaders who can implement them locally; sector representatives and intermediaries who can mobilise their industries; universities and research organisations who can embed the methods and develop the knowledge; and the ekip community, who built this and will continue it. 

As ekip puts it: we asked, we learned, we built it. Now, use it. 

Practical information 

From Policy to Action – ekip closing event 

Friday 23 October 2026, 09:00–13:30 

NatLab, Main Stage, Kastanjelaan 500, Eindhoven 

 Organised with Dutch Design Foundation during Dutch Design Week 

 Registration for the morning closes on 16 October at 16:00: https://ekipengine.eu/events/from-policy-to-action/  

From 13:30 to 16:00, participants can visit the Dutch Design Week exhibitions at Strijp-S with recommendations by ekip. A DDW ticket is required and is valid for nine days: https://ddw.nl/en/tickets  

CreativeNL Live with ClickNL, 23 October, 16:30–19:30, is registered separately. 

Notes to editors 

About ekip. ekip is a Horizon Europe funded flagship project designed to boost innovation capacity in ecosystems by including the cultural and creative industries, the piece that is usually missing. Creative competences are not an optional extra: they are essential to the green and digital transitions, to social inclusion, and to handling complex innovation processes with many different stakeholders. Rooted in open innovation, ekip brings broad groups of stakeholders together to co-create evidence-based policy recommendations. The consortium comprises five universities, four cultural and innovation consultancies, four cultural and creative organisations, four cities and more than fifty CCI network organisations. 

About Dutch Design Week. Dutch Design Week is about the design of the future and the future of design. Over nine days, Eindhoven fills with more than 120 locations of exhibitions, lectures, award ceremonies, debates and gatherings, showing the work of over 2,500 designers to more than 300,000 visitors. It is organised by Dutch Design Foundation, which connects designers and clients, accelerates research and creation, and encourages businesses, governments and organisations to use design as a driver of innovation and societal transition. ddw.nl | dutchdesignfoundation.com 

Further reading. 

The five strategic recommendations: https://ekipengine.eu/what-should-europe-do-next/  

The Swarm logic: https://ekipengine.eu/europe-has-the-talent-what-it-lacks-is-smart-activation/  

Open Innovation 3.0: https://knowledge-bank.ekipengine.eu/resource/open-innovation-3-0-empowering-europe-through-cultural-and-creative-industries/  

Press contacts.  

Katerina Kalimera kalimera@mscommgroup.com  

Maria-Louisa Zacharaki zacharaki@mscommgroup.com  

Images, interviews with ekip partners and panellists, and press places for the morning session are available on request. 

 BNO 

BNO, the Association of Dutch Designers, is the voice of the Dutch design community. The association is representing and connecting designers, brands, design education and the government. BNO advances designers and the design profession through expertise, a valuable network and advocacy. 

 CLICKNL 

CLICKNL, a publicly funded foundation, connects and strengthens design power to build a resilient, sustainable, and innovative Netherlands. CreativeNL is an initiative of CLICKNL and is carried out in collaboration with partners from the creative industry and the knowledge and innovation ecosystem. 

 Dutch Design Foundation & Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy 

The Dutch Design Foundation strengthens the position and impact of designers and creates space for the power of design through initiatives such as Dutch Design Week, the Dutch Design Awards, PONT, and Coalitions. Its involvement in CreativeNL Live is made possible in part by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy (EZK). 

 Ekip & TU Delft 

Ekip is the European collaboration platform that strengthens the innovative power of ecosystems by involving the cultural and creative industries (CCI). The Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) at Delft University of Technology is a world-leading design institute.