Even if occasionally we would still hear that museums and creative industries have not much in common, in the last few years we were able not only to highlight a variety of cooperation in result of which products and services with high added value were created here in Latvia, but also started to observe a change of attitude among colleagues towards the very idea of bringing museums and makers together.
At the other end of this spectrum, we see an increasing interest among the makers and agents of creative industries themselves in museums as a considerable resource for creative economies. After all – if this would yet sound as a novelty to someone – cooperation between museums and makers is the basis of communication work of a modern museum. To put it simple, it is an attempt to talk to the audiences in a language they understand.
Why is it important to us – the think tank Creative Museum? Because:
- it is an imperative for museum sector in 21th century to build a competence not only in collections, educational, and social agency of museums but also in its economic value;
- museums (with a careful balancing of it primary – educational role) should become and be treated as equal players among others in the field of cultural and creative economies;
- innovation and creativity in museums should serve as a driving force in reaching out to new audiences and at once help modernising the sector.
If we look into cultural policies both at the European and national levels, one cannot notice that Creative Europe is aimed at providing an opportunity for museums to raise its profile in the field of creative economies as part of the Europe 2020 vision. In turn, Creative Latvia necessarily is projection of that same cultural policy thinking into the national level.
Thinking about this cultural policy, think tank Creative Museum since 2014 started to focus on museums and creative economies as perhaps the least expected and at times nearly completely neglected resource for developing products and services with high added value. This is when we first approached a number of makers asking to share their experience about cooperation with museums. Few simple questions were asked: why museum, what’s the added value, and what are the challenges?
A clip was produced in result showing a variety of cooperation projects from Latvian museum scene, including ones with designers, museum production companies, souvenir makers, digital product developers etc. – a small selection from a growing pool examples…
In parallel to this local mapping exercise, since November 2014 think tank Creative Museum has initiated and is leading a working group Museums and Creative Industries within the Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO).
As part of this assignment, in 2015 we published report Museums and Creative Industries. Mapping cooperation where we tested an actor-network theory based methodology for registering and evaluating cooperation among museums and makers in Latvia.
In 2016 the developed by Cretive Museum methodology is applied further at once in Iceland, Romania, and Poland by our NEMO Working group members in order to get a first broader international overview.
We are truly glad to be witnessing more and more outstanding examples of cooperation among museums and makers, authors, artists – the creative sector as such both in Latvia and further afield. It means there is more to be monitored and analysed in view to how museum resources are used to create products and services with a high added, and, not least, social value.
In this part of website we will keep telling about museums and creative industries and highlight some of the best cooperation projects.