ekip, a partnership of 17 organisations across Europe funded by the European Union, is a collaborative platform designed to boost the development of innovation capacity in ecosystems to include the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI). The CCIs being the missing piece in ecosystems. ekip believes that creatives are not just nice to have, they are essential for driving progress on major challenges like the green and digital transformation, and social inclusion. Creatives competences and skills are crucial to tackle complex innovation processes involving diverse stakeholders. Rooted in open innovation, ekip brings together broad stakeholder groups to co-create and deliver evidence-based policy recommendations. Together, ekip is shaping smarter innovation policies for ecosystems where collaborative processes, cross- and open innovation is standard practise: the project believes that this will include and make the CCIs drivers of innovation creating a better and brighter future.

“The challenge is that good support mechanisms for these networks and open ecosystems are lacking. The ekip project, European Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Policy Platform, aims to change this” says coordinator Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth, Lund University. 

The “ekip Engine” is an elaborated process where policy recommendations are co-created with board groups of stakeholders. Built on open innovation, it sparks engagement, builds awareness, gathers feedback, and empowers people to shape policies that through innovation drive societal change.

The University of Edinburgh ekip team is based at the Institute for Design Informatics, with Nicola Osborne, Vikki Jones, Caitlin McDonald and Emma Pirie, and is led by Morgan Currie (Social and Political Sciences), having been initiated by Prof Chris Speed (IDI).

For more information on ekip and to explore the wider policy engine see the main ekip website, https://ekipengine.eu/ and explore resources in the ekip Knowledge Bank.