Place-based innovation of cultural and creative industries in non-urban areas

The IN SITU project combines research and experimental actions to advance the innovation-related practices, capacities, and potential of CCIs based in non-urban areas of the EU, a constituency of the CCI sector that has grown in visibility and significance over the last decade in Europe and internationally but which is still vulnerable due to the lagging attention of research and policy to its needs, characteristics, and potentials. The project aims to advance understanding of the forms, processes, and governance of innovation involving cultural and creative industries (CCIs) located in non-urban areas of Europe and to advance the ability of non-urban CCIs to act as drivers of innovation, competitiveness, and sustainability for the locales in which they are located. IN SITU brings together leading approaches to investigating economic evolution and diversification, a challenge-oriented approach to processes of innovation, non-urban place-based planning and development, and creative industries entrepreneurship to investigate the situation of CCIs in non-urban areas. The project couples this with a pragmatic capacity-building programme to enable CCIs to address some of the key issues of their communities/region and of our time. The core defining aspect of IN SITU is the interlinking of research and practice through place-based IN SITU Labs, hubs for projects in 6 non-urban regions across Europe, located in Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Finland, Latvia, and Croatia. Involving both Europe-wide research and place-based experimentation, IN SITU will provide an in-depth knowledge of the direct and indirect effects, cross-sectoral connections and spillovers, innovative strategies and systems, and needs of CCI practitioners in non-urban areas. Complementary to this, the project will assess and advance the multi-level innovation and culture policy and planning frameworks that contextualize and can enable this work.