Creative Baltic Sea Region
The Baltic Sea Region has a rich creative industries sector, characterized by strong and diverse national and regional cultures. The region provides an ideal model on how an economy based on knowledge and innovation can be developed. Yet it has not exhausted its export opportunities and potential for transnational cooperation.
In view of the high economic value of the Baltic Sea Region’s creative sector, public authorities, business development organisations, incubators as well as cultural institutes, transnational networks and NGOs all have a role to play. Supporting and facilitating the internationalisation of companies is a key priority. Internationalisation and transnational cooperation will enhance the economical possibilities of the creative industries. However, a lack of sufficient international contacts and experience in cooperation processes has significant impact on this being achieved. In addition, cultural institutes, transnational networks and NGOs – though familiar with working on the international stage – generally know less about the specific strengths, weaknesses and needs of the regional creative industries.
Joining Forces
Creative Ports brings all of these different groups together, allowing a bundling of their competencies to better achieve internationalisation goals. Fourteen partners from the countries around the Baltic Sea, funding agencies, municipalities, international cultural institutes, and universities, have joined forces in a consortium led by the Goethe-Institut (DE) and include:
City of Vilnius (LT), Creative Estonia (EE), Danish Cultural Institute (DK), European-Russian InnoPartnership (RU), Filmby Aarhus (DK), Hamburg Kreativ Gesellschaft (D) Westpomeranian Region (PL), Media Dizajn Szczecin (PL), Media Evolution City Malmö (SE), ARS BALTICA (GER), South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences SBC (FI), TalTech University (EE),Tallinn Business Incubators (EE).
Learn from each other and share
The Creative Ports project aims to improve and encourage collaborations between the actors of the participating countries and to further develop strategies and processes around internationalisation. A range of workshops and seminars will be held throughout 2019-2021, with the partners able to exchange experiences and best practices on internationalisation. The partners will exchange tools of internationalisation, test them in a transnational context, and create and organize lasting relations between actors in the CCI sector. These opportunities will allow space for joint development of training and networking formats, as well as discussions and analysis around methods of supra-regional cooperation. The partner organisations therefore work with local cultural and creative actors and SMEs and bring them to transnational cooperation with peers from other regions. Companies and other players in the cultural and creative industries thereby open up opportunities for internationalisation and initiate joint value creation.
The results of these collaborations and strategy sessions will be documented via a publicly accessible platform and provide learning modules to share lessons learned from the cooperation activities. Organisations beyond the partnership thus can learn and carry out the activities themselves.
Results
You can find the results of the project and learn more about Creative Ports on the project’s website.
Creative Ports is a project funded by the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme of the European Union, running from September 2018 to October 2021. It is a flagship project of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR). You can find more on Interreg Baltic Sea Region here.
