Creative industry, day 1

Conference took two days and was loaded with seminars, business sessions and workshops. Well known names from creative industry presented relatively new topic mainly to professionals interested in this growing and recently more and more unifying sector of the industry. 

 

First day, among other activities, a business session about branding attracted creatives dealing with the brand of Kosice. Session led by Michal Ruttkay aimed to search for attributes of the town that would describe Kosice in the most possible real and attractive way. It is the town of talents and new perspective. 

 

 

The reason that an IT valley is being built here is not just practical, there are more extras next to the cheap labour. It is a genius loci, a magnet that calls every weekend and every holiday masses to come back home. 

 

Many many questions raised during the session: Is Kosice a tolerant city? What is a symbol of town, a cathedral or a panel block house? Are there enough opportunities for citizens? 

 

Few years ago, it was a trend for irish guys to visit Bratislava, just for 19 Euro of flight ticket they could enjoy cheap beer, pretty girls and football. Today it is a challenge to attract visitors for Kosice, but for more cultural thing…  and the question is how?

 

People could come here to record movies, make animations or games. Our town doesn't have this reputation but it is possible in the future. It just need the correct marketing. Andy Warhol's parents left east Slovakia village before he was born, to find better job in USA. Andy's brother wish was to build a museum in the country where his roots come from, even Andy never touched that ground. Now we need a new symbol for this region. 

 

One of the advantages of Kosice is that the town is quite unknown. Relatively. Comparing with Budapest, Prague, Varsava… not many people have heard about Kosice yet. So it is up to creatives from Kosice now, what they write on this blank page of the town in order to make it popular for ECC 2013. One sure thing is, it is a different place from others, but session leader advises: "be more specific, it must be a product, to say just it is new is not enough". 

 

Second session's leader Martin Horvath put the topic back to ground when freely described that it is all about the money, not a public secret at all. So when ECC team sends an invoice to Brussels, there must be written what for. 

 

We (citizen of Kosice) may think that we are friendly, hospitable and kind, yet the study of EUcommission says exactly opposite. Yes, it is town of many paradoxes. And Horvath is right, it is very responsible to create an image for a city. So more questions raised. How many jobs will bring ECC to Kosice, 100 or 1000?

 

Let's make it a bit simple. Important is to specify strategy, how to change industrial character of Kosice to creative city. The goal of ECC is exactly this transformation. And it should be also measurable. Brand building right now must be accepted by wide public, otherwise it is not real to succeed. Because locals are the best ambassador of the project. 

 

More about the conference in the next blog :-)