Humak into Horizon Europe Partnership – Co-Creating Innovation Policy Platform for the Creative Industries
Humak University of Applied Sciences is participating into the Horizon Europe ekip consortium led by Lund University. The consortium consists of 17 partners from 12 European countries. The aim of the Horizon project is to develop innovation policies for cultural and creative industries and the total value of the grant is 6,000,000 Euro.
-”One of our focus areas is competence building of creative industries. We have worked in the field since our establishment 25 years ago and we have become one of the leading experts in the area in Finland”, says Jukka Määttä, the president of Humak.
According to Määttä Humak’s participation to Horizon grant consortium is the proof that University of Applied Science and its staff has been doing great work also from the international perspective.
Ekip creates new ways for support and funding policies for the CCIs
Humak will lead two tasks in the consortium. The first one is to analyse European cultural and creative sectors policy landscape. The second is to lead to work on innovation tools that will support the implementation of policy recommendations.
“ekip is the largest ever European Creative Industries Policy research and implementation project. This 42-month work will impact European cultural policies directed to cultural and creative professionals all over Europe” – Marcin Poprawski, Senior lecturer at Humak and leader of the Finnish team of ekip, explains.
There are three ekip project objectives focused on Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs):
- build a CCIs meta-network,
- provide CCIs Policy Recommendation Engine and
- activate CCI-driven Innovation ecosystems.
New policies for innovation are needed to provide the ecosystems in these sectors with more tailormade support, facilitating access to funding and incubators. June 1 will be the starting date for EKIP.
Innovation processes involve experimenting, testing, and exploring ideas in a network (ecosystem) of many stakeholders. These ecosystems consist of large and small companies, institutions, organisations, researchers, and citizens. They are needed to develop and try new concepts, attract investors, and get new businesses up and running more quickly.
17 Parners’ Work will impact Cultural Policies all over Europe
“The challenge is that good support mechanisms for these networks and open ecosystems are lacking. The ekip project, European Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Policy Platform, aims to change this” says coordinator Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth, Lund University.
The 17 partners of ekip bring specific competences to the innovation policy platform. The process of formulating policies to develop innovation ecosystems can be compared to an engine. More than 40 CCI network and organisations across Europe are engaged to start the policy engine by defining and giving the engine data about policy areas. The data is then analysed, prioritised, and further processed and brought to the Policy Lab. In the lab, new formulations are produced, iterated, and tested in partner cities ecosystems.
The plan is to run 15 such processes through the policy engine. To make sure that the policies are scaled and implemented, the final step is managed by an Observatory. A model called LIEPT (Lund Innovation Ecosystems Portfolio Tracking), will be implemented to follow the effect of the policies in ecosystems.
New policies key to green transformation.
As a part of the EU Green Deal, all products in the EU must be traceable and inform how they meet criteria for responsible and sustainable production. Ekip´s innovation policy engine can be used to facilitate the new directive of digital product passports. It could suggest for instance how local innovation ecosystems can use policies to support the development sustainable clothing that has ID tags with information. This enables recycling processes in new ways, supporting the green transformation in EU.
Partner organisations of ekip are: Lund University (Sweden), Creative Business Network (Denmark), The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision (Netherlands), The University of Edinburgh (UK), Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), Creativity Lab (Estonia), Mscomm (Greece), The Polytechnic University of Milan (Italy), Technopolis Consulting Group (Belgium), Idea Consulting (Belgium), Humak University of Applied Sciences (Finland), Icoolhunt (Italy), City of Rotterdam (Netherlands), Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava (Slovakia), Creative Industry Kosice (Slovakia), Saint-Étienne School of Art and Design (France), New Moment (Slovenia)
Contact
Contact: Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth, ekip Coordinator, charlotte.lorentz_hjorth@fsi.lu.se, +46 46 222 41 19
Contact in Finland: Marcin Poprawski, Senior Lecturer, ekip team leader at Humak University of Applied Sciences, marcin.poprawski@humak.fi
Written by Marcin Poprawski
2023-03-01 12:16:29