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The Cultural Forum 2013

The CULTURE FORUM was held at the Bozar in Brussels, 4-6th of November 2013

These NOTES were written by Pyrrhus Mercouris

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Moderation: Mary McCarthy- Director of the National Sculpture Factory Ireland.

Damian Horner- Brand Development Director for Hachette

Keynote speech by Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission

He began by stressing the importance of peace, indeed, peace is a fundamental aim of the EU. He then went on to say that the EU is confronted by all kinds of challenges [i.e., the economic and social crisis]. He sees culture developing some kind of “cement” that binds us together and it is through culture that you can have a more united and open European

He then said that culture is a platform that develops social resilience and he sees culture as a tool for diplomacy [soft power].

Culture is a “key:” economic tool. Though he warned that we should not just see culture as a means for economic growth, but in this crisis, culture and the creative sectors have the potential of creating even more GDP. Already the 8 million jobs in culture and creative industries [CCIs] have weathered the crisis better. CCI contribute 4.5% of GDP.

He sees culture as a driver for urban regeneration and here he cited the success of the Capitals of Culture. Therefore, he would like to see local and regional governments having culture policies and using culture to regenerate run down parts of cities.

He then went on to say the Creative Europe Programme will have a 1.46 billion Euro budget which is a 9% increase in the budget of the Media and Culture programmes. This programme will help artists and arts organisation. Coupled to this will be the Culture Guarantee fund.

“Smart fiscal consolidation” means funding those sectors with growth potential, that is the arts, culture, research, science, innovation and entrepreneurship.

“Europe is like a book and the first pages are very beautiful about peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights …. But we have to continue the narrative …. Be open to changes and criticism…. And the new narrative will give artists and intellectual a space about how to develop the EU and how to share values in a globalised world and this is a driver for the EU!” He then went on to say that the citizens have lost confidence, but culture is a “thread” that links the EU project with citizens.

Finally he stressed the importance of inter-communication due to the Internet and the digital economy since it has transformed the way all sectors operate.

 

Opening Statements

• Androulla Vassiliou- European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth

Two years ago she was asked at the last culture forum how culture would become part of the EU’s agenda. Now she boasted that thanks to dialogue and consultation the EC has put in place the Creative Europe Programme [2014-2020].

In other words she boasted about the establishment of Creative Europe.

There are following challenges:

 

• Šarūnas Birutis- Minister of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania

He also talked about how important the value of the arts is to the economy.

He then talked about copyright. Copyright industries contribute 5% of Lithuania’s GDP and 5% of exports. He talked by comparison about fertiliser as this sector contributes also 5% of GDP, but while it dominates and is a visible sector with its factories and armies of workers, it produces no more than copyright industries. The same with the entire dairy industry which represents 2.4%, that is less than the copyright sectors.

Other than saying how useful the culture side is for the economy, he said nothing that was all that new and exciting. In other words, he repeated the same old messages about supporting culture and creativity.

• Doris Pack- Member of European Parliament, Chair of the Committee on Culture and Education.

Never showed up.

He talked about democracy, meaning that you have to have a ’culture of democracy’. In other words, if you do not have a democratic culture, you are never going to be democratic in your actions. Europe has swapped the fetish of ‘national growth and territory’ and stopped bothering with this and compete only economically. In other words, we have a fetish of economic growth.

He attacked economics for having polluted our culture. Food and drinks have all been stripped of their cultural meanings.

 

SESSION 1 – Measuring the true value of culture

How to improve data on the contribution and value of culture to European societies, in terms of participation, inclusion, well-being, and the economy – considering local/national/EU-wide methods of data collection, and other ways of measuring value.

Jerzy Hausner- Head of the Department of Public Economy and Administration, Cracow University. Former adviser to the economics ministry of Poland.

He is sceptical about state funding of culture; he concluded, that culture is a factor of production and economics, but it is more than that. The state is the problem as the market is part of the problem, while both the state and market have to be a part of the solution.

Frankly he did not say anything that I could understand.

Panel discussion A

• Hasan Bakhshi - Director, Creative Industries, Policy & Research Unit, Nesta

He talked about how to measure CCIs and gather proper statistics. All kinds of sectors and issues have to be taken into account, for example, spill overs, training, problem solving, etc. He gave a list of studies. Audience surveys are needed while taking into account spill over effects by interviewing, for example, employers who like employing art students and why [it seems art students are good problem fixers].

• Elisabetta Lazzaro- Chair of Cultural Management, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Described some finding from research done in Portugal and Belgium on measuring culture

• Matteo Maggiore- Deputy Director Public Affairs and Communications, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

He feels that culture is the end and economics is the means – what does that mean? Already you cab measure culture and creative sectors – e.g., 4.5% of EU GDP [Barosso]. He cited how in the last 10 years the Chinese have been buying up patents, because there are the cornerstone of creative industries.

Debate with the audience

Closing remarks by Dominique Ristori- Director-General of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission

He mentioned the importance of research and that the Joint Research Centre [JRC] held a meeting on 24 October 2013 to discuss what research should be undertaken to improve cultural statistics.

He stressed:

He repeated the need to have much better measurements that can produce statistics which are meaningful and can indicate in a better way development.

 

@Diversity Award Ceremony – Innovative Ideas for the cultural and creative sectors in Europe

With the participation of European Commissioner Androulla Vassiliouand Doris Pack, Member of European Parliament

The Award Ceremony, which marks the close of the @diversity European Idea Competition, will honour authors of 12 new and, as yet, untested ideas which make innovative use of information technologies for the promotion of cultural content, as part of a European Union funded project.

All twelve project ideas are multimedia and have more to do with ‘creativity’ than with ‘culture’. In other words, it confirms the policy of the EC which will support ‘industries that are “creative” and multimedia rather than culture orientated. As for the “poetry cloud” project, here the idea is a multimedia APP that will allow users to take their favourite poems and then put them together on letters and post cards and send them to loved ones. A clever and innovative project, but it does not ‘create poems’. The projects:

MAKE CULTURE projects

ACCESS CULTURE projects

SPREAD CULTURE project

  • “Rewalking Europe” by Tim Jones [UK] www.motiroti.com

  • “SMartART” by Paolo Mazzanti of LCI Images Communication Lab, Florence University [IT]

  • “Sonic Paintings” by Zbigniew Wolny [NL]

  • “Narrated Film Downloads” by Dean Rhodes-Brandon www.yrlocalcinema.com [UK]

 

Video message by Jonathan Mills - Festival Director and Chief Executive, Edinburgh International Festival.

He stressed the important role culture has had after WWII, just like the Edinburgh Festival which has also, in his opinion, brought people together. He too stressed the need of better measurements.

 

Panel discussion B (including a creative surprise!)

• Luca Bergamo- Secretary General of Culture Action Europe (CAE)

Criticised GDP as a measurement and cited the need to have values in any measurement.

• Cristina Ortega- President, European Network for Arts & Cultural Education and Research (ENCATC)

She cited how the UN is taking Bhutanese approach that Gross Domestic product is not as important as Gross Domestic ‘Happiness’. ENCATC is working on some kind of research that includes the ‘culture liberty document’ and approach to measuring quality of life as it is now being done in Latin America.

• Bernd Fesel- Deputy Director, European Centre for Creative Economy (ECCE).

He described the “Evaluation Turn” project, which is another approach to assessing evaluation and monitoring.

• Beatriz GarcIa- Head of Research, Institute of Cultural Capital, University of Liverpool. Her work includes assessing the impact of Liverpool Cultural Capital, tourism and culture.

 

Debate with the audience

Vox pops

Short statements by 7 pre-selected participants

Session on Culture and Structural Funds and cohesion policy [ERDF]

EC representative from DG REGIO, she stated that the EU should by the end of this year have agreed on the Structural Funds and stressed that we, the stakeholders, have to start lobbying our local and regional governments to include culture in their cohesion and ERDF plans, and she went on to say that diverse studies have shown how culture generates growth.

Partnership and integrated strategies would be the way forward as outlined in the Structural Funds regulation. Some of the operational programmes will be based on thematic sectors [e.g., energy]. She said that so far only three member states are disregarding culture.

Mr Pierre Godin gave example of how this could be done – that is how culture can be included in an operational programme. You would be asked by a regional government, why should they include culture. How can culture help solve the Region’s problems? You need to be able to answer questions like these. For example: cultural heritage is a reason to attract investment and can make an area attractive. Indeed, an area that has a dynamic culture sector, it attracts more easily investments. He gave all the obvious reasons to invest in culture and creative industries [CCI] as arts and culture experts are well trained.

A new aspect of the ERDF is that you can link culture to thematic priorities e.g., education, lifelong learning and education and to the other thematic priorities. Indeed, you should try to include in thematic priorities culture as part of a holistic approach.

Need to have partnerships with environment, industry and private sectors, civil society and to combine it with the policies of the member state.

Need to promote ‘smart’ specialisation strategies and policies, and then you have a chance.

Before an operational programme is adopted, it must have EC approval.

From my point of view, it seems nothing has changed. Those regions, for example in Italy, like Sicily, Tuscany, Emilio-Romgna, etc, always have used structural funds to support cultural heritage, multimedia and cultural SMEs.

 

Session on civil society

Here was experienced a very sad presentation from diverse cultural organisations that are about to die due to a lack of funds:

It seems, if these organisations do not find a funder by 2014 they close .

5th of November

Moderation: Mary McCarthy - Director of the National Sculpture Factory Ireland

Damian Horner- Brand Development Director for Hachette

Opening address by Jan Truszczyński- Director General for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, European Commission

Measuring the value of culture would help to design better funding instruments. More evidence based criteria are being used by the EC to design all its funding programmes. The EC senses there is a need for action, but it found itself that without evidence it could not make a convincing case to support the culture sector.

New original forms of funding like crowd funding have emerged. This is a participatory and interactive. The EC is seriously interested in exploiting the potential of crowd funding and even feels it may have to be regulated.

SESSION 2 - EXPLORING NEW FUNDING MODELS FOR CULTURE

How to build and expand new communities of followers and subscribers, and develop new models of financing such as instrument loans, pre-release financing, corporate sponsorship, crowd funding, co-production, and artistic interventions in business or public services.

Rasmus Wiinstedt Tscherning- Chairman, European Creative Industries Alliance (ECIA) & CEO of CKO and Creative Business Cup

Gave an example of how a commercial firm like LEGO is now making use of modern architecture and using it. LEGO makes a profit, the demand of government sponsoring and grant schemes that a project should not be commercial or make profit is in his view ‘strange’. He gave examples of cultural and arts organisations that have embraced commercial and profit motives.

Professionalising artists, should also include ‘culturalising the market’. Meaning you need more art and culture in business. Film sector has always been skilful in raising funds.

Business development is something the “creative industries alliance” which was set up by the EC DG Enterprise. It looks at clustering, business angles, access to finance including crowd funding. Now a public consultation has been launched.

The alliance is also looking a ‘spill over’ or ‘cross sector innovation’.

Hopefully, the alliance with produce good recommendation in 2014 to the EC.

Regarding the ‘creative business cup’; 40 countries have adopted this scheme, to encourage companies to be creative. The cup will be presented to in Copenhagen. Each country has it own cup, e.g., Brazil has five cups – it is easy to run.

Panel discussion A

• Veronique Bossaert - Communications Administrator, Brussels Philharmonic

80% funded by Flemish government, however, s an ambitious orchestra they decided to seek new funds and winning an oscar for a movie [i.e., the Artist], so a commercial company was created whereby the hire their musicians to work during their free time. They get more income this way, but the funds comes from clients who now want the orchestra to produce the film music.

Regarding the quality of string instruments. These are very expensive. Musicians have basic instruments. High quality instruments can cost 50,000 euros. An investment bank set up a private foundation is now funding. You can sell second hand string instrument usually a 10% profit.

• Benji Rogers - Founder & CEO, PledgeMusic

Yesterday’s audience is ever coming back. Digital audiences are sharing. The size and potential of what fans want to do is not understood. In the USA there is 2.6 billion dollars is left because fans have money still to spend. And it seems that fans when asked through Facebook and Twitter, what they want is access to music while it is being made. The cultural artist event is is the window of opportunity. You cannot ‘de value’ music but you can de value music dissemination by making it free. Fans spend in the US 68 dollar each year on music. But what they are buying is the journey of the product. Artist are giving away most of what they do for free by streaming and online dissemination. Start with live music. Crowd funding will change the scope of creative industries.

• Amelie Retorre - Development Director, IZNEO

in France, more books are sold that videos, music and indeed any other cultural product. Asterix and Obelix cartoons are more popular than ever. They now have a digitised version of their cartoons. They have now created a federation: IZNEO. This is now a digitised album of non copyrighted reading material. They also have a subscription for digital cartoons. Every month they get more subscribers for their copyrighted material. Having said this the book itself remains popular because the books remain a poplar art object.

 

Debate with the audience

Some pertinent opinions and remarks were made by the audience:

 

Panel discussion B (including a creative surprise!)

• Odete Patricio- Managing Director, Fundação de Serralves

points made by her:

• Rebecca Amsellem - Ph.D candidate in cultural economics and adviser, Sorbonne University:

• Merlijn Twaalfhoven - Composer, La Vie sur Terre

Culture can divide people – cited Cyprus as an example, however, in Cyprus he did a music project in which both sides of the divide participated in and enjoyed.

Debate with the audience

Session 3 – Audience development – Making cultural participation a reality

How to reach “non-audiences”, involve and engage different generations and social groups,including through participatory art, partnerships and synergies with other sectors.

Andrew McIntyre- Director of Morris Hargreaves McIntyre

He indicated that there are several types of audiences: there is the hard core audience which goes to concerts, shows and festivals and exhibitions. Audience participation tends to focus on them. Another audience is the excluded, that is people who for all kinds of reasons do not go. There are marginalised audiences, like immigrants groups, audiences that feel excluded because they cannot affords to go, and other types of audiences that for all kinds of reasons are not motivated to go to cultural events. It seems that 60% of the population is keen on classical music in Britain, but only 14% bothers with it.

Young audiences are intersting. In many cases they drive or push their parents to go to an event

Panel discussion:

• Yoel Gamzou - Founder, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor, International Mahler

Orchestra 1st Kapellmeister and Vice Music Director, Staatstheater Kassel.

He did a nice speech saying that artists have only themselves to blame if audiences find their work irrelevant. He was the only person who questioned the concept of audience development and participation.

• Rarita Zbranka - Director of AltArt Foundation, Romania/Strategy Group member of A Soul for Europe initiative

She jusat described her project and what does.

• Fredrik Lindegren - Artistic Director, Umeå 2014

Explained how the town of Umeå [European cultural capital for 2014], and showed how the town plans on networking with audiences.

FLASH SESSION - VIII M ROOM

Licenses for Europe

EU Initiative to deliver rapid progress in bringing content online through practical industry-led solutions (European Commission Communication on “Content in the Digital Single Market”, 2012).

Speakers

Simple introduction.

Discussion on copyright are starting to dominate policymaking. Between 1998 to 2010 just three articles on copyright in the Economist magazine, since 2010, fifteen have been written.

Three new directives are to be made ready: Orphan works, regulation on collecting societies and online music licenses [the third?].

Copyright environment is under review. EC has started to contact stakeholders. “Licenses for Europe” is to contact stakeholders: i.e., industry including publishers, film producers and music producers, to discuss with intermediaries, distributors [i.e., internet platforms] and consumers [individuals, libraries, film archives, museums, researchers, depositories, etc] to examine licenses.

Basically the EC is planning to publish in a week or two its finds and the results of the consultation.

Marie Sol “Licenses for Europe” [EC]

Her concern is film archives. One million hours of film is stored and never seen. Digitising this archives costs a lot of money. Clearing rights is expensive, and this was a cost that had to be reduced. Conflicts exist between stakeholders [i.e., archivists vs copyright holders]. EC set out to create a framework for discussion. The key objective is access, access to researchers, to schools, to young students of film. By establishing a common aim a road map to digitise old films is possible. The main stakeholders will sign a deal: archivists [FIAPF], collecting societies [SAA] and Film producers. If revenues are generated, all will share.

Focus is on film rather on TV programmes

There is a webpage somewhere in the EC website on this topic.

The EC is also dealing with e-books. In certain instances, contractual practices have created friction and achieving a situation to allow us to transfer our books to all of our electronic devices is held up [peer2peer].

Next Wednesday the EC will present its work in the Belymont.

Q&As

Metadata – private photos have been violated. Licenses are not for this area. ?????

For books is a bit of a thorny issue.

On creative commons – this is about free licenses; and this was not an area that was discussed.

On Europeana, contemporary art museum has made works of art that it can give, but if feels, still a bit insecure of having its work up loaded.

A museum fears visitors photographing their paintings and sculptures. But they have a deal with a sculpture that only his photographer can photograph his statues. Now a visitor has photographed the statue and up loaded the photograph on Facebook. They have asked for its removal, but do not feel that they have the power to remove it? it seems to the museum that people will photograph their statutes and use them to make their own postcards.

PEARLE – from a performers point of view, the same applies with the issue of digitising and then using old film recordings and old audio-visual performances. Producers’ and performers’ rights are being undermined and therefore are reluctant to permit up loading of archival material which they own. PEARLE would like to broaden the discussion on the use of orphan works.

It seems to the EC, that the goal is to simplify licenses. However, it cannot solve all the problems mentioned, for example the photographing of a statue and using it for commercial purposes. Indeed, there are all kinds of similar issues, like websites using some ones music without permission.

On e-books, piracy has been an issue, and licenses could be part of the solution. At the moment music sector is ahead on licenses unlike audio-visual and e-books. Specifically on broadcasters, some public sector broadcasters allow programmes, without blocking but some block and limit access territorial; eventually, industry has to come up with solution and use licensing. The directive on copyright collecting societies includes a chapter on music licenses and this will assist industry to create a better business model.

One must bare in mind that the bulk of copyright is still determined at Member state level. The EC can only seek to harmonise practices.

EBU stated that the BBC has one million hours of programmes that are being digitised. The difficulty is one of cost and demands on human resources. EBU members are all daunted by the digitisation costs and are concerned that they are not sure they will get their money back.

Discussion on Creative Europe Programme 2014-2020

The Creative Europe programme is over complex and will prove to be a nightmare in administering it. Three existing funding programmes are merged, but each of these three: Culture Programme, Media Programme and Eurasmus Mundus programme will retain their identity. “Creativity” now is the key word, not culture or film. Projects to be funded need to indicate their economic value.

Each different funding strand will have a specific guideline explaining what you must do. So complex is the programme, they are not yet sure about translating it into all the official languages of the EU. Indeed, they are not sure if the wording of the guidelines is correct.

Projects would be funded 50% of their eligible costs. In a few cases 80%.

The first call for proposals was launched in December 2013 with a deadlines for applications in February-June 2014.

 

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