Forum d´Avignon Ruhr: reINTERview with Anne Magnus and Jean-Pascale Vendeville (part 1)

The study Kurt Salmon presented at the Forum d’Avignon Ruhr in Essen is on «Cultural Investment and undertaking : from intuition to decision-making». We talked to the deliverers of the study in interview.

 

Anne Magnus is Senior Consultant and joined Kurt Salmon Brussels in January 2010. With 6 years of working experiences in consulting and politics, she developed high level skills in strategies & policy/programs evaluation for the public or private sector (Cities, Ministries, Regions…) as well as in international benchmarking on economic development, innovation policy, and cultural economy. She coordinated the study on creative an cultural enterprises in Belgium (2012) and was also the co-author of the Kurt Salmon cultural studies for the Forum d’Avignon 2011 and 2010.

Jean-Pascal Vendeville is Director at Kurt Salmon, and responsible for consulting activities in the cultural sector. Within this function, he leads companies in their strategic issues and transformation projects within areas such as national public administration (French Ministry  of Culture and Communication, etc), local administration (cities, regions, etc), cultural premises (Louvre museum, castle of Versailles, etc), development agencies (Atout France, etc), private foundations, and international organizations.

 

 

In spite of financial turmoil how can we do better in tying the State to its mandate for supporting culture?

 

Anne Magnus: The financial crisis has not spared Culture; patrons and donors are cutting their contributions just like many countries engaged in political consolidations of their public finances are doing.

Our belief is to the contrary, this needs to be the time to invest. In the future, the role of the public service will have to re-focus on creating the framework conditions in favour of creativity.

First, the public sector needs to better empower the cultural stakeholders in their activity. We  have noticed a paradigm shift from an institutional logic of “one-stop grants to single-stream” to a logic of “empowerment” of professional organisations and businesses in targeted sectors to bring collaborative projects that have a strong impact in terms of quality, avant-garde, or international notoriety. The case of DUTCH Design Fashion Architecture in the Kurt Salmon study is very inspiring on how the State can enable cultural and creative industries to be competitive and visible in China or India.

Second, the public sector has to be creative in order to design new ways to access finance, on new business models complementary to existing ones, including crowdfunding (My major company, People for cinema…), public private partnerships, ‘business angels’, guarantee funds (like the ‘Fonds Patrimoine et Création’ from the French Caisse des Dépôts, St’art invest in Belgium...), cultural fiscal policies, channeling of savings from the general public… Between public and private finance, new schemes have to be finetuned and marketed to all the stakeholders: creators, public institutions, savers.

 

 

How can state and firms be convinced of an understanding of culture and art as a process that should be funded and sponsored in a process-like, long and supportive way?

 

Jean-Pascal Vendeville: In a growing industry largely made up of very small companies, it seems important to create conditions for each to break out of their isolation. Public and private sectors have to talk together, to bring competences together, to combine them, to foster creativity and breakthrough innovation.

Let me give you two examples:

First example, the Imaginove cluster which was formed in the Lyon area, in France, now concentrates more than 200 companies in the fields of cinema, TV, gaming, animation and multimedia. The common goal is to develop synergies between these sectors by encouraging forward lateral thinking and stimulating commercial innovation.

Therefore, the concentration of creative industries in the form of clusters helps to reach critical mass in terms of resources but also to create synergies in terms of skills and expertise. Through the dialogue between public, private and research actors, the creative industries especially when mixed with high tech, management and science can speed up co-creation and innovation for the  entire economy.

The second example is the digitization project of the Royal Library of Belgium carried out in the form of a Public Private Partnership. The federal administration BELSPO is able to create new added value in Belgium and sell in the future cultural engineering services abroad for other heritage digitization projects.

Thus, the digital culture represents a huge opportunity of long term revenues, jobs …for the States as well. In their recent study report for the European Commission on the “conditions of online European heritage”, estimate that digital content (an estimated investment of about 100 billion Euros for all collections within the cultural institutions of the European Union)  will constitute new “raw material for products and services, particularly for sectors such as tourism, education and new technologies”, stimulating economic growth and job creation.

 

 

Follow the second part of this interview here.

 

The current Kurt Salmon study on the topic is available here.

 

Since 2009, Kurt Salmon, international consultancy in strategy and change management, is a scientific partner of the Forum d’Avignon, international think tank of Culture, economy and medias.

In 2009 and 2010, Kurt Salmon published 2 studies for the Forum of Avignon analyzing the interrelation between culture and economic performance of 47 cities from all around the world. The panel suggests that territories focusing on culture have a lower and decreasing unemployment rate. Aside from the cultural barometer of cities, the cultural strategies of 13 cities (from LA to Brussels, from Mumbai to Bamako) were explored  in more details (cultural fiscal policies, clusters, festivals, cultural tourism…).