Dutch cultural and creative industries join forces in The Open Coalition: Participation at the Core

Dutch Design Foundation, Federatie Creatieve Industrie, CLICKNL  and Centre of Expertise for Creative Innovation have joined forces in ‘The Open Coalition’. The founders want to combine knowledge, skills and experience on how the Dutch cultural and creative industries can contribute better in solving hypercomplex societal challenges.

The challenges the world faces go beyond the nation’s borders and call for creativity, solidarity and collaboration on a larger scale. That’s why EU President Ursula von der Leyen calls for a “new European Bauhaus – a co-creation space where architects, artists, students, engineers, designers work together to make that (European renovation wave) happen.”

World-class design education, extensive experience in policymaking (16 years Creative Industries Key Sector, CLICKNL and Centres of Expertise Creative Industries), one of the most influential design events in the world (Dutch Design Week since 2002) and many more makes the Netherlands a partner not to be missed out.

Building on the collective experience

The only thing missing so far was a feasible ‘front door’. As of now, The Open Coalition harnesses the power to research, organise, mobilise, inform and educate the professionals within the cultural and creative industries. The founding partners combine extensive experience in developing and running programmes in which meaningful interventions on a systemic level are developed. And in which society takes the lead and the empowerment process plays an important role.  Whether it comes to programmes such as What if Labs, World Design Embassies, IDOLS* and Living Labs.

By building on collective experience, the coalition develops and deploys innovative ways of working to increase the quadruple helix collaboration, leading to new skills and insights, new structures for collaboration and more participative society.

Bart Ahsmann, CLICKNL: ‘It becomes clearer than ever that technology alone is not going to help us out. Next to key enabling technologies we recently introduced key enabling methodologies (KEM’s) in the innovation space. So far that has worked very well!’

Han Bekke, Chairman Federatie Creatieve Industrie: ‘The new competition is collaboration. To remain relevant, we have to work together, and we are also very good at that. To remain competitive, we must be able to offer scale. That is also why TOC is a good idea!’

Martijn Paulen, Director Dutch Design Foundation: ‘The scale and complexity of the challenges on the one side and the opportunities and possibilities on the other, call for new processes, new ideas & dreams, with an urgent need for creativity which can only be effectuated through collaboration without borders.’

Dominique van Ratingen, CoeCI program manager: ‘With CoECI we are proud to be part of the creative coalition that embraces the human-centred and inclusive approach in the sustainable transition. Creative Innovations will help us to think big and at the same time be pragmatic to achieve the common goals and integrative solutions.’

Join the Open Coalition

The Open Coalition is as of now open to new partners; interest has already been shown from various parties. New European Bauhaus, which is likely to launch a call later this year, will be the first occasion where TOC will apply for. Learn more about the initiative on 27 May, via the online conference at Pakhuis de Zwijger: Dreaming of a sustainable and inclusive city.

For more information on The Open Coalition, please contact Ingrid van der Wacht.