2017 marks the middle of the planning period for both the EU framework programme Creative Europe and the Creative Latvia Cultural Policy Guidelines 2014–2020.
Considering that not only the titles but also the nature of the two programmes, both the supranational and the national, stem from the same value system and strive for the same global objectives, i.e., more jobs, economic growth and social cohesion, the mid-term evaluations thereof promise to reveal a lot of interesting things to museum professionals as well.
With the beginning of this era of new thinking, the think tank Creative Museum has been working in its niche in the cultural and creative industries, seeking to solve the issue proposed in the cultural policy guidelines, which states that until now “regular targeted mapping of the creative industries sectors and informing of the society has not been carried out”. Alongside the well-organised informative work on design processes on the fold.lv platform and the prestigious new National Design Award of Latvia, by mapping and informing people about the cooperation forms between museums and creative industries on a local scale, Creative Museum has piqued the interest of the Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO), within which we have been supervising a work group on this subject and attracting new cooperation partners since 2014.
In the end-of-the-year report we summarise data on three identical national research projects (Latvia, Poland, Iceland) that were carried out using the methodology developed by our cultural economics experts (Gints Klāsons and Uldis Spuriņš). The report also includes data on a European-wide museum survey campaign and a condensed version of the handbook by the Northern Ireland Museums Association for the promotion of collaboration between museums and creative industries. This report will serve as aid for NEMO in pinpointing and strengthening the role of museums in the European cultural and creative industries sector.
Just like before, Creative Museum will continue working with the actor–network theory (ANT), which is handy to apply in museum studies in order to identify greater correlations between tangible and social networks and make some generalisations, as well as with a practical case study method. The case study will be the main information gathering tool in 2018, when we will identify and select a diverse range of good practice cooperation examples between European museums and creative industries, which will result in an illustrated report due for the NEMO’s annual conference in Valletta, Malta. We have no doubt that it will include a couple of the most outstanding such examples from Latvia too.
It might be a coincidence, but the most innovative cooperation practice is to be found currently in the private museums. With mid-term evaluation in mind, we have to hope for more good cooperation examples in the national, municipal and public autonomous museums in the remaining programming period until 2020. The basic prerequisite for this though, is a solid development (project) budget and, naturally, greater openness to museums and creative industries thinking. We are halfway there.