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RegionArts - Activities Linking ICT and Art
M A P P I N G T H E E C O S Y S T EM
Activities Linking ICT and Art
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This document reflects the author’s views only and the Interreg Europe programme authorities are not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.
Project Name: RegionArts Project No: PGI05301 1st RegionArts Booklet 2019
Contact us @RegionArts www.interregeurope.eu/regionarts/
Foreword
During the last decade, there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of artistic and creative processes as catalysers of innovation, something particularly noted in areas such as Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that intersect in many fields with artistic processes. Recognising this importance, public authorities at regional, national and EU level have been trying to bring together ICT and artists communities to explore new ways of working. Nevertheless, there is still a clear need for improvement. Firstly, in many places, support to the creation of links between arts, ICT and entrepreneurial spirit for the promotion of successful business innovations will require new policies and actions, as most of policies available today are conceived for an information and knowledge age (often even for an industrial age) that is no longer predominant.
Successful innovators in sciences and technology strongly benefit from artistic skills, something that nowadays is particularly noted in an area such as Information and Communication Technologies. Arts do not just prettify or make technology more aesthetic; they often make it possible in the first place. Despite this recognition, it is commonly accepted that innovation has not yet tapped into the full potential and diversity of artistic talent across Europe. For a more vibrant, competitive ICT-driven economy, it is important that ICT experts, researchers and business adopt creative and artistic visions, or at least work with people who have these qualities. In this regard, integrating arts in ICT when arts are ICT based in themselves will not be enough.
The ultimate aim of RegionArts is to promote the competitiveness and innovation of companies through the integration of, and synergies, between ICT and artists.
RegionArts partners are convinced of the need of integrating the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) with ICT for SME innovation and competitiveness. As regional authorities, business development agencies and creative clusters, they have been working on promoting these cross-overs for the last years. But it is not an easy task. By helping partners in the design and implementation of public regional and local development programmes on this field, and by finding effective ways to promote synergies and crossover between these two worlds, RegionArts will promote new collaborations and the increase of SMEs introducing an innovation.
In this policy booklet, we share the lessons learnt from the project activities on the mapping of regional ecosystems and activities linking ICT and Art, providing, for each region an example subset of the CCI/ICT ecosystem.
Introduction
During the last decade, there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of artistic and creative processes as catalysers of innovation. Scientific and technological skills alone are not sufficient anymore. Successful innovators in sciences and technology strongly benefit from artistic skills, something that nowadays is particularly noted in an area such as Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Arts do not just prettify or make technology more aesthetic, they often make it possible in the first place.
During the last years, public authorities at regional, national and European level have been trying to nurture links between arts and in the ICT sector through different public interventions. Nevertheless, there is still a clear need for improvement. Firstly, in many places, support to the creation of links between arts, ICT and entrepreneurial spirit for the promotion of successful business innovations will require new policies and actions, as most of policies available today are conceived for an information and knowledge age (often even for an industrial age) that is no longer predominant.
Despite this recognition, it is commonly accepted that innovation has not yet tapped into the full potential and diversity of artistic talent across Europe. Moreover, if the digital economy of Europe is to prosper over the long term, its full and diverse artistic base must be effectively engaged. For a more vibrant, competitive ICT-driven economy, it is important that ICT experts, researchers and business adopt creative and artistic visions, or at least work with people who have these qualities. In this regard, integrating arts in ICT when arts are ICT based in themselves will not be enough.
RegionArts partners are convinced of the need of integrating arts in ICT for SME innovation and competitiveness. The consortium blends the experience of two main type of partners:
• Regional and/or local development agencies or departments (KEPA Business and Cultural Development Centre, ENTER Koprivnica, ART-ER Stock Joint Consortium, Molise Region) focused on promoting the competitiveness of SMEs and innovation;
• Organisations focused on promoting the role of arts and non-technological innovation as a catalyser of innovation (Porto Design Factory, Baltan Laboratories, University of Lapland), while collaborating closely with their public administration towards this aim.
Together, the RegionArts consortium is exploring how to design effective relevant support programmes promoting the integration of artists in ICT projects. By helping partners in the design and implementation of public regional and local development programmes on this field, and by finding effective ways to promote synergies and crossover between these two worlds, RegionArts will promote around 140 new collaborations in total (around 20 per region), i.e., 20% of the beneficiary SMEs introducing an innovation by 2022. The objective is to improve the implementation of Structural Funds/other funds in partner regions, through adapting or designing one support scheme in each region for the promotion of collaborations between artists and ICT companies.
Mapping Methodology
The concept of the innovation ecosystem is receiving attention worldwide. Governments and industrialists are keen to foster innovation ecosystems to systematically cultivate favourable environments and encourage local innovators to create knowledge and capture business value. In particular, innovation ecosystems require specific attention when faced with fastdeveloping emerging industries that closely link science, technology, arts and business.
The methodology considered four phases of work, which were then specifically adapted for the individual context of each region. The initial step included the collection of data from each one of the regions in the project, with the goal to quantify the share of Arts and ICT activity in the region.
After this step, the project partners surveyed who were the organizations and initiatives which were providing support to Arts and ICT, including from policy makers to individual artists, art galleries to research centres, museums to donors, policies to events, or accelerators to awards.
Using this knowledge, mapping co-creation sessions were organized in meetings with relevant stakeholders, to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the ICT/CCI ecosystem and brainstorming policy actions to tackle the weaknesses and build on the strengths. The result of these sessions allowed to complete the initial mapping.
The final phase was devoted to investigating potential collaborations within the ecosystem. Again using co-creation sessions, it is possible to learn where stakeholders want to go, why they would want to collaborate and have some information for potential match-making.
This policy booklet shares the lessons learnt in the application of the methodologies in the RegionArts mapping of the regional ecosystems, and the specific challenges found in each one of the regions. For each region it also provides an example subset of the CCI/ICT ecosystem.
The methodology used in the project used a framework to investigate the innovation capacities of a multi-layered ecosystem that involves arts, ICT and innovation, when considering two core attributes of the ecosystem: the integrated value chain and the interactive network.
Regional Ecosystems
North Region (Portugal)
Analysing the Scene
Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) of Northern Portugal are seen as having the potential to leverage, modernize, and make more competitive the traditional sectors of the economy, such as textiles, footwear or furniture more competitive. This seems to be a decisive factor of its importance in the North of Portugal with regard to the necessary reconfiguration of its model of economic, social and cultural development.
CCIs are also a relevant contributor to the differentiation and growth of the tourism sector, as well as to the valuation of the identity, heritage and culture of a region on a symbolic plane in globalized modernity. The CCIs are also fundamental reading and intervention keys for the crossing of new languages and artistic and cultural communications, since they potentiate the restructuring of the production systems and the forms of dissemination of the products, being a clear space of technological innovation, but also cultural and social.
The creative sector is an important contributor to Portuguese GDP, with 3.6% of GDP corresponding to 6.7 million euros (values of 2016), and 120 thousand jobs. In sum, the cultural and creative activities tend to assume, in the context of the knowledge economy, as undisputed levers of wealth generation, job creation and the attractiveness and competitiveness of local and regional economies. And the North Region takes a large share of this market, with 25.6% of the sector. The number of CCI companies has been increasing in northern Portugal, with the largest number of companies in the graphic arts and publishing group (printing, editing, and distribution of newspapers, magazines, books, etc.), followed by advertising, architecture, and drawing (graphic and industrial, very focused on jewellery design).
There is a concentration of cultural and creative activities that follows the centrality of the social, economic and cultural development, showing that they tend to take on a dynamic context of the knowledge economy as undeniable engines of wealth generation, job creation and attractiveness and competitiveness of the local and regional economy. Apart from the Porto Metropolitan Area, some sectors are taking shape and weight in the cities of Trofa, Santo Tirso (Invest Santo Tirso Empreende and Fábrica de Santo Thyrso) and S. João da Madeira (Sanjotec and Oliva Creative Factory), resulting from a recent / emerging dynamic of culture and creativity clustering, which is fundamental to anchor this development to the wider space of the Porto metropolis. At the same time, in response to a crisis in the textile industry, the city of Braga was able to reinvent its economic fabric with the birth of a technology cluster that paved the way for a new era of technology companies, digital communication
Emilia-Romagna Region (Italy)
Analysing the Scene
The Emilia-Romagna regional system is strongly focused on the productive dimension and is extremely dynamic from the point of view of the research for innovative and competitive solutions. The industrial ecosystem is composed of around 405,000 enterprises (Unioncamere, 2018), which means around 1 enterprise every 10 inhabitants, employing 1,84 million people. According to the regional S3 classification, Knowledge Intensive Enterprises are 23,500, while Cultural and Creative Industries are around 58.000.
A study carried out by the Emilia-Romagna Economic Development Agency shows a high propensity to micro size, both in terms of employees (1-2 employees) and turnover (under 50,000 €), and a majority composed by individual companies and freelancers, which together account for over 70% of the total.
In recent years, the digital economy structurally transformed the regional industry and, in the next years, it will keep transforming the whole industrial landscape. In particular, as regarding CCIs, internet and the digital revolution itself have dramatically changed several dynamics. Just to make a few examples: copyright protection, the mechanical reproduction of the work of art, distribution, scalability and, more in general, business models, are all issues that need to be addressed according to the new perspectives given by the digital revolution. On the other hand, CCI industries represent a key player to ignite non-technological innovation and boost “traditional” industrial sectors, thanks to their capacity to increase the value and bring to light the hidden potential of their products. This is particularly true when CCIs can count also on technological competences.
Despite that, cultural and creative professionals tend to overlook the effects of technologies rather that exploiting them as an asset, and this is particularly true in Italy. Several regional measures have been directed to support CCIs organizations in understanding and making the most of the advantages stemming from key enabling technologies, focusing in particular on ICT.
This challenge – how to integrate new technologies and creative/artistic competences into industrial processes – is nowadays at the core of the Emilia-Romagna regional innovation policy.
Noord-Brabant Region (Netherlands)
Analysing the Scene
The focus of the analysis is in the Eindhoven area, where both the creative and the technological sector are highly developed and active. Historically built largely in parallel with the growth of Philips and currently with a.o. Eindhoven University of Technology and the High Tech Campus, the technological sector is a big part of the city’s identity and a lot of citizens are working or involved in it. The region is known for its innovative strength and its integral and multidisciplinary way of working. The region excels at developing high-tech machines, systems and products. Due to the high amount of highly educated citizens and the expertise in technology, the region is also referred to as the Brainport region. Together with Airport Amsterdam and Seaport Rotterdam, Brainport Eindhoven is nationally recognized as one of the three biggest economic pillars.
Next to the technological sector, the creative sector is a big part of the region’s identity. The internationally renowned Design Academy Eindhoven is based in the city. In several creative hotspots, such as Strijp-S and Sectie-C, creative studios cluster together. Once a year Eindhoven is the international hub for design during the Dutch Design Week and every year in November Eindhoven is all about Light Art Festival GLOW.
Within the city (among clusters, policy makers and companies) the added value of interconnecting the creative and technological sector is recognized. The city brand of Eindhoven is Technology, Design and Knowledge (TDK). There is a strong belief that combining these skillsets and working in multi-disciplinary projects brings the new perspectives that we need to face future challenges. Organisations and initiatives such as Baltan Laboratories, Dutch Design Foundation, De Kazerne, MAD, STRP and many more focus on facilitating and initiating these cross-overs. However, there is also still a lot of room for improvement when translating the ideology and belief into concrete activities. The three pillars (Technology, Design and Knowledge) are individually well developed and successful. Also, there are numerous activities whereby one sector reaches out to the others. For example, design reaching out to technology or technology to design. But when it comes down to structurally connecting the three at the very basis of an activity or organization, there are still no substantial references. And also, it is not a given in policy instruments and their implementation.
This mapping analysis combines previous maps made of the creative sector and the technological sector. Giving us insight in the potential for cross-over collaborations in the field of Art and ICT. Defining the potential for cross-overs, provides us with a set of selected policies, organisations, actors and initiatives on whom we can focus and zoom in to investigate what they’ll need from policy instruments, to support them in collaborating with other sectors.
Kentriki Macedonia Region (Greece)
Analysing the Scene
Central Macedonia is a unique land with a long history and continuous human presence from Prehistoric times. As such, it holds an important advantage of cultural tradition and artistic activity for thousands of years.
Especially Thessaloniki, the capital of Central Macedonia, the second largest city of Greece and the Cultural Capital of Europe in 1997, has a long tradition of intense cultural activity. As testified by the existence of dozens of museums, theatres and artistic multi-purpose facilities, concert halls, outdoor sculpture and its music heritage, Thessaloniki produces strong and inclusive culture.
On the other hand, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) is identified as one of the sectors with a particularly decisive role in the activation of the advantages of the economy of the Region of Central Macedonia towards innovation, competitiveness and extroversion. Due to its dynamics and synthesis (existence of a critical mass of ICT companies – mostly newly established ones – in Central Macedonia activating in specialised knowledge areas), ICT sector contributes to the movement towards developing new knowledge and innovation intensive enterprises, not only in the ICT sector itself but also in all linked business sectors supported by ICT, especially since there is a significant room for applying technological innovations. The RIS3 strategy of the Region of Central Macedonia highlights the multi-level importance of ICT sector setting its empowerment for further development through the use of innovative tools and through the enhancement of intersectoral connection and cooperation.
This need to intersectoral cooperation is reflected in RIS3 as a specific strategy to create a mass of cooperation and innovation activities by exploiting synergies in the fields of creativity, culture, tourism and production. The sector of Art & Design is clearly linked to ICT sector and, in order to further empowering this cooperative innovation and interconnection between these two sectors, programmes for supporting innovation, creativity and design are developed.
‘’Strengthening research, technological development and innovation’’ and ‘’Enhancing access to, and use and quality of, ICT’’ are funding priorities of the Operational Programme of Central Macedonia 2014-2020. Special emphasis is put on:
Lapland Region (Finland)
Analysing the Scene
Lapland is the northernmost region in European Union located mostly north of the Arctic Circle. Whereas Lapland is the largest region of Finland covering 1/3 of the country, it is also the most sparsely populated area in whole Europe. These extreme conditions make Lapland a truly unique setting for living, let alone business. Biggest economic areas of Lapland are on natural resources (forest) and tourism industry. Here lies also innovation potential for emerging industries.
The targeted policy instrument of Region Arts in Lapland is European Regional Development Fund (ERFD), Programme for Sustainable Growth and Jobs 2014 - 2020, Priority axes 2. Producing and Using latest information and knowledge. Specific objectives of the priority axes are development of the centres of research, expertise and innovation based on regional strengths, strengthening innovation and competitiveness of SMEs in domestic and foreign markets, developing solutions based on renewable energy and energy-efficient solutions. The operational programme is implemented through Lapland Regional Programme coordinated by Regional Council of Lapland.
In general, networking, collaboration, internationalisation and innovations have been a core mission in regional development of Lapland to be able to improve competitiveness both in national and international level. During the respective programming period, projects have emphasised strengthening of innovative cooperation and building of learning environments as an infrastructure for innovations. The aim has been to bolster Lapland’s strong livelihoods and education, as well as to promote entrepreneurship.
The status of arts ICT in Lapland Finland is rather two folded. There have been long-term research and education expertise on both with relatively strong national and international collaboration. Yet the current business sector is very small. On arts, there is respective education and research under Lapland University Consortium (LUC) by University of Lapland and its Faculty of Arts and Design producing 1/3 of designers in Finland with a master’s degree. Lapland University of Applied Sciences (LUAS) complements arts education by its degree programme in culture and arts as does Sámi Education Institute providing education and research on handicrafts. ICT research and education are provided by LUAS by its degree programmes in general ICT. Lapland Training Centre REDU has also undergraduate programme in ICT. In general, Lapland education and research activities have prioritised investments to development and innovation environments. According to this, there is relatively strong RDI operation with several development environments including activities related to arts and ICT collaboration.
Continental Croatia Region (Croatia)
Analysing the Scene
Today’s state of art is such that solo artists, first of all fine artists, cannot normally make money only from art (most of them), but have to decide to work in some of the industries where their pronunciation is not complete. Their presence is most noticeable in marketing departments, graphic department, PR, digital content creation and other places. In addition, artists are in most cases subcontracted for the job they perform and their contribution is not recognized as important. Often this sector is misunderstood and is inclined to attack in the sense of criticism by politics, employers and peoples. The ICT sector in Croatia in the last decade is the fastest growing sector and the export promoter which employs more than 28,000 people. The problem that exists is that there is not enough educated population that could work. In this sector leading mobile operators, software companies, digital marketing agencies, computer programming companies and others. Although the indicators and tendencies of good Croatian ICT industry are still lagging behind the EU average.
This type of analysis has enabled us to ascertain what is the actual situation about this type of cooperation in practice. Without analysis we would not get information that there were positive examples but they were stimulated on their own initiative. This type of analysis is also needed to establish the ways of thinking of those to which the project relates. A mapping analysis could find out which spheres of interest groups saw the potential of cross-sectoral cooperation. By using some other method, it would not be possible to determine the current state of affairs as well as critical areas such as lack of cooperation, where they would be run, testing laboratories, and others, that are crucial to achieving co-operation between the two sectors. The results of the analysis set the foundations for further work and a guide that can create further activities.
So far we held several stakeholder meetings and disseminate results of the project on local and national level. We invited and involved ICT sector and artists. Some of our stakeholders, who were participating on EoEs are relevant for influencing on policy making at national level, and others are involved in projects that include cross-sectoral cooperation. City of Koprivnica and ENTER Koprivnica finished a project of building an Incubator of creative industries where variety of services are available in order to foster cooperation between IT companies and artistic sector. We often use this project also for better dissemination of results and promotion of project activities.
Molise Region (Italy)
Analysing the Scene
Molise is the second less populated among Italian Regions. The territorial extension and the inhabitants have small numbers (4,460 km2 for about 306,000 inhabitants), as well as entrepreneurship. On the other hand, the potential of naturalistic and historical-artistic beauties, of traditions and creative abilities of Molise is great. The traces of history have generated a very rich heritage of material and immaterial cultural assets, especially of the following types:
Archaeological, as the most important prehistoric archaeological sites in Europe, testimony of an intense frequentation of human groups ranging from the Lower Paleolithic to the Bronze Age, the archaeological areas of Roman and Samnite periods, the monumental complexes of the Benedictine culture and the Middle Ages, public museums, libraries;
Landscape, that presents a wealth of castles, villages, natural parks, sheep tracks;
Anthropological – Ethnographic – Demographic, an heritage made of crafts and ancient crafts, music, songs and folk dances, festivals and folk traditions, local museums, traditional costumes, transhumance, dialect and linguistic minorities, ancient flavors;
Visual arts and performing arts, such as theaters, cinema, radio and TV, with entertainment, films, video games, as well as design, fashion and creative driven activities.
Considering this wealth of cultural assets and activities, Molise Region has included within its ROP ERDF/ESF 2014-2020 a series of actions that could promote integration between ICT and the arts.
Molise ROP is financed mainly by the ERDF and can rely on a financial endowment of about € 105M. The Programme covers all the region and, even if changes are expected after potential financial remodeling (September 2018 EC request), it is structured around the following Priority Axes (PA):
• PA1 (€23M): Improvement and promotion of research, technological development and innovation;
• PA2 (€11M): Access to services related to ICT;
• PA3 (€33M): Promoting productive systems competitiveness;
• PA4 (€20M): Support for energy efficiency and the use of renewable energies;
POLICY BOOKLET
M A P P I N G T H E E C O S Y S T E M
Activities Linking ICT and Art
POLITÉCNICO DO PORTO Luis Miguel Pinho LMP@sc.ipp.pt Ana Fonseca ana.fonseca@pdf.ipp.pt
This document reflects the author’s views only and the Interreg Europe programme authorities are not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.
