Edition 2015

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Creation and innovation ‘made in Europe’

Culture and its values remain a – great – battle, anchored in economic reality and humanist utopia, passionately oriented towards innovation and the pleasure of sharing, firmly rooted in the heart of the citizens.

If there are numerous reasons for concern (reconsideration of copyright by opposing it to users and digital practices, temptation to reduce culture to a commodity - relegated to “contents” - ; decline in funding; disloyal competition between the States of the European Union; head-spinning and opportunities of the data exploitation…), concrete proposals are within reach, sometimes already defined, but often too less shared.  

Concrete proposals for cultural and creative industries, public decision-makers and citizens

The balance between the development of commercial activities and practices, and ethics, the combination of economic and tax models, income sharing for the creation stakeholders on the whole value chain, the upward harmonization perspectives for intellectual property and copyright, the new combinations of data sharing and associated incomes to see solid creative and cultural projects, the development of a new generation of cultural entrepreneurs or the relationship between art-culture and technologic-scientific-social innovation: all topics into which the think-tank of the Forum d’Avignon goes in depth and develops in 2015, through its international studies, its tribunes and its debates throughout the year.

Four main topics will be the subjects of studies and working groups with partners and experts:

• Intellectual property – and particularly copyright: “How to think an intellectual property in the age of digital maturity?”
• Tax policy for creation in 18 countries around three axes: heritage preservation, promotion of creation and access to culture: “Which tax policies for creative Europe?”
• Hybridization of economic models: “Which economic models in the age of collaborative economy?”
• Culture of data and predictive algorithms: “Data Culture: which role for cultural institutions and industries?”

Loyal to its values, the Forum d’Avignon has the ambition to make concrete proposals and suggests a working agenda:

• That favors a collective reflection and action, beyond sector-based approaches
• That relies on a common creative dynamic, associating authors, access, audiences and markets from the cultural and creative sectors.
• Finally, that highlights the practices of the countries of the EU and the European challenges: from copyright to tax policy, from training to digital dissemination, to social and economic valorization, to opportunities for territories.