Reflection on the cultural and creation sectors from the Observatory: support policies to promote creation and Factories of Creation

The study and analysis on creation and its relevance within the sector of culture have been from the beginning key lines of work for the Observatory. In 2010 two researches on creation have been carried out which deal with the following contents:

• Support policies to promote creation. A first perspective from a “compared” focus has been established and also cases of good practices and references have been looked for among the support policies to promote creation of different countries. This focus aims at serving as a starting point for reflecting and debating on the improvement of current policies within the Basque Country in this field. The research includes a first part which analyses international practices within this field. The second part focuses on a perspective from the Basque Autonomous Community which evaluates the useful learning of that information towards our reality. In order to do that, it transfers the structure of interventions presented at an international level to the Basque Autonomous Community and points at possible scenarios of short term, middle term and long term work. These researches serve as a support guide for a process of institutional reflection on innovation and improvement of our current framework for creation support.
  Complete study Spanish version (pdf, 846KB)
  Complete study Basque version (pdf, 822KB)
• Factories of Creation. A second research line has aimed at getting to know the reality of the Factories of Creation more specifically. These are spaces which have become one of the main creative laboratories of cities and which are set as an important part of their innovation and artistic research policies and cultural production. Moreover, the Factories of Creation are also an important part of the policies aimed at new or young artists who find in these spaces the possibility to take the step towards becoming professional. The heritage policies of different places have also favoured the birth of these spaces; they are in fact outstanding tools for the strategies of cultural proximity. The Factories of Creation support and stimulate local creative expression, and many of them support young artists to develop projects offering them resources which allow these projects to be developed. However, beyond making creation and production possible, these Factories of Creation also play an important role in distribution. They work on educating an audience on new languages and making it sensitive to the most innovative cultural proposals.
  Complete study Spanish version (pdf, 1.1 MB)
  Complete study Basque version (pdf, 958 KB)

Finally, it needs to be pointed out that these two researches have offered some first interesting conclusions which will be further worked on during 2011 considering the importance of creation and creativity within the field of cultural activities.