Publication: Creative Collaborations for the Future

How can we bring creative industries and non-creative industries closer together? At our COCO4CCI conference in March, we invited experienced speakers from all over Europe to share their advice. In our publication you find the summarized topics and main learnings from their insights.  

Driving change in times of uncertainty 

How can we bring creative industries and non-creative industries closer together? This is one of the challenges we have been tackling over the past years, and it has become the main focus of an initiative started by the Interreg Central Europe organisation: COCO4CCI – which stands for “Collaboration Collider for Cultural and Creative Industries“. With a focus on Advanced Manufacturing, the programme's aim is to build a collider network of organizations that complement each other with knowledge. Subsequently, innovation processes and methods like design thinking can be applied in companies and organizations throughout all different industries, and the creative and cultural sector can help drive the change needed for the future. 

We wanted to build our conference “Creative collaborations for the future“ around these principles. We searched for key players and experts all across Europe that are willing to share their insights, concepts and learnings. When putting together the programme, we drafted key questions that should build the backbone of the conference: 

  • How might we engage/mobilize people in projects and in times of uncertainty?  
  • How do you use the know-how and experience of a diverse group of people to co-create?
  • How might we design inclusive and open rooms/spaces? 
  • How might we improve the quality of our living experience? 
  • How might we turn experiments into sustainable concepts/models?
  • How might we illustrate the value of creative work? 
  • How might we focus on the simplicity, functionality, and circularity of materials without  compromising the need for comfort and attractiveness in our daily lives?

During this process we realized how much the principles of the New European Bauhaus initiative by the European Commission feeds into the core of COCO4CCI. The goal to bring creatives, artists, business people and engineers together to work on a brighter, more sustainable future is the common denominator in both programmes. And our selected speakers share these beliefs and our mission as well. They share their insights to cross-domain collaboration, cross innovation hubs, designing safe creative spaces and building innovative architecture. And they demonstrate how collaboration between creatives and the manufacturing sector do not only impact the economy, but also culture and society.

Ultimately, the COCO4CCI wants to establish sustainable change and policy recommendations to build a beneficial ecosystem for CCI and cross-sectoral strategies as well as research and evaluation. So, while these talks and presentations are only a snapshot of what is happening in Europe right now, it also shows how far the movement has grown and will continue to grow. 

Download the publication here: Publication-Creative-Collaborations-for-the-Future.pdf

Watch the conference video recap: Creative collaborations for the future (conference synopsis) #COCO4CCI

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