Project facts

Duration: 2019-02-01 - 2023-01-31
Project coordinator: UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Project consortium: City University of London (GB), Universita degli Studi di Bari aldo Moro (IT), Stockholms Universitet (SE), Universitat de Barcelona (ES), SWPS Uniwersytet Humanistycznospoleczny (PL), Universitat Wien (AT), Fondatsiya Observatoriya Po Ikonomika na Kulturata (BG), Kea European Affairs (BE), Universita'degli studi di Milano-Bicocca (IT)
Funding bodies: H2020-EU.3.6. - SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies MAIN PROGRAMME H2020-EU.3.6.1.1. - The mechanisms to promote smart, sustainable and inclusive growth H2020-EU.3.6.3.1. - Study European heritage, memory, identity, integration and cultural interaction and translation, including its representations in cultural and scientific collections, archives and museums, to better inform and understand the present by richer interpretations of the past TRANSFORMATIONS-06-2018 - Inclusive and sustainable growth through cultural and creative industries and the arts
Subject areas: Cultural Creative Industries, Economic value, Policies
Contact: info@cicerone-project.eu
Budget: € 2 999 439,96

Presentation

Creative Industries Cultural Economy pROduction NEtwork (CICERONE) provides policymakers with a unique and innovative perspective from which to understand the cultural and creative sectors (CCS), among which the cultural heritage sector. Previous analyses have typically mapped the location and the spatial distribution of clusters of CCS. CICERONE innovates by exploring the networks of production in the CCS. Using the global production network (GPN) approach as a point of departure for a series of extensive case studies, the project first empirically examines the phases of production (creation, production, distribution, exchange, and archiving), explores which actors are active in each of these, where they are located, and whether there are lead actors who initiate, organise, monitor and control these production networks. The project subsequently positions these networks in a broader context and explores their institutional, territorial, and social network embeddedness. The rich empirical case study findings on the variegated patterns of production networks within the CCS are used to 1) assess which data are available for mapping these networks – and which data is not -, with the purpose to more accurately measure the societal impact of the CCS; and 2) construct a typology of production networks across the CCS, on the basis of which 3) it explores the implications for effective policy support for the CCS in the areas of labour, competitiveness, sustainability and crises resilience. The CICERONE project involves rounds of consultation with CCS stakeholder and cumulates in the launching of a cultural economy observatory, showcasing the project’s findings, their applicability and aiming to facilitate ongoing debate on capitalizing the potential of the CCS for our societies.

Impacts & Results

The overall objectives of this research project are as follows:

A) Improve our understanding of CCIs

  • Unpack, map and compare the production networks and related flows of select CCI sectors at different spatial scales in order to explore where, how and by whom initial value in the production network is created and where, how and by whom value is captured. Relate these processes of value creation and capture to existing power relationships in select CCI sectors;
  • Assess which specific skills (more traditional craft as well as digital) are essential to producing creative commodities and investigate how these crucial skills are reproduced and which institutions (state, market and commons) at which spatial scale (local, regional, national and EU-wide) are essential to reproducing them in select CCI sectors;
  • Explore the labour conditions (wage, working hours, job certainty/precariousness, mobility) and the relationship with social division of labour in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity in select CCI sectors.

B) Policy implications/recommendations

  • Propose new ways of gathering of data on CCIs based on gaps in the existing data, as identified according to a GPN perspective;
  • Improve statistical data and quantitative and qualitative methods by setting up a European Observatory, in close cooperation with relevant stakeholder organizations, to aggregate knowledge, address high fragmentation and share strategic intelligence for each region to draw upon;
  • Analyse the relationship between the institutional regulatory context at different spatial scales and the functioning of CCIs (focusing on entry barriers, financing models, tax incentives, trade agreements, and IPR protection across sectors) in select CCI sectors;
  • Develop a framework for targeted policies to enhance the contribution of CCI activity to competitiveness, social cohesion and sustainability based on coherent sets of indicators on the national and EU–level.

C) Better mobilization and connections between stakeholders. 

  • Develop a practitioners’ platform to identify strategic connections, forms of collective action, and set up intermediaries, substantiated by a “living example” of what we hope to develop over time;
  • Examine how CCIs, through their direct economic effects, involvement of citizens and symbolic content, can contribute to the social cohesion and identity of social groups.
  • Establishing sector-specific, country-specific as well as stakeholder-group/focus groups, which will also comprise practitioners and users of data already in the early phases of the project.
  • Involving non-academic entities including policy makers (on different levels: local, regional, national, EU), entrepreneurs in CCIs (both individual and collective as in associations), workers in CCIs, and intermediaries/tastemakers/critics.

These overall objectives have been translated into more specific objectives in the various work packages of the project.

CICERONE will be producing a series of reports and policy briefs. Each of these is linked to specific research tasks and has its own due date. Once published, all of these will be shared publicly, allowing a wider audience to stay informed about the project and its (intermediate) findings. (To consult the reports and policy briefs already published, click here)