EKIP – European Cultural and Creative Industries Policy Platform

Unlocking open innovation together with ekip

Creativity is not a nice-to-have. It’s infrastructure. The Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI) are vibrant, innovative, and essential to a dynamic society. But despite their economic value and cultural significance, these industries often find themselves stuck in a system that doesn’t know how to support them properly. CCI includes everything from design studios and architecture firms to fashion designers, digital creators, writers, dance ensembles, musicians and filmmakers. It’s a sector buzzing with creativity, experimentation, and ideas. And yet, it’s regularly misunderstood—particularly when it comes to scalability and integration into mainstream innovation ecosystems.

At ekip, we work to embed the CCIs into the heart of Europe’s innovation ecosystems as system-shapers, bridge-builders, and policy co-creators. The challenge is connectivity. We can build better frameworks for collaboration: Spaces where creatives, universities, and public institutions meet as equals; Policies that support clusters and networks, not just single “unicorn” companies. Across Europe, creatives are already driving solutions to complex challenges — from green transitions to digital transformation, from inclusive city-making to new business models. But for this potential to scale, we need policies, ecosystems, and partnerships that take creativity seriously. That’s the work we’re doing — together with cities, practitioners, and policymakers.

Tech start-ups get incubators. Universities have research labs. Meanwhile, artists, designers, and cultural organisations, people who work to empower human values, have far fewer support systems to turn ideas into lasting impact. The gap is unbalanced and limits what industries in the EU can achieve. When CCIs collaborate with other sectors, they bring inclusive design, storytelling, and experimentation. Diverse skills that make innovation more accessible, relevant, and transformative.

Ekip reimagines what innovation support could look like when it’s designed with creative and cultural practitioners in mind. Policy is both the starting and ending point for our work at ekip. Our approach is threefold: Analyse existing policies – Assess the role of institutions – Address the gaps. By examining the current landscape, we identify gaps and propose improvements, fostering innovation ecosystems in the creative sector.

Goals and actions:

Ekip team is on a mission to make open innovation the go-to way of working in creative industries. But what does that mean? It’s all about collaboration. By bringing together people from different industries, we aim to create new, exciting ideas that can solve some of today’s biggest challenges—like making Europe greener and more inclusive for everyone.

The core framework for achieving the goals is the ekip Policy Recommendation Engine, which is an iterative policy development approach that actively involves local and regional stakeholders. The engine consists of three main activity strands:

1) Identification, prioritisation and investigation of policy needs

2) Formulation and testing of ecosystems to assess policies in real-world settings

3) Outreach to engage stakeholders across various ecosystems.