Part of an Interreg Europe project aimed at boosting the creative and cultural industries sector (CREADIS3), Wallonia has decided to invite its European partners to the KIKK, now the famous festival of digital cultures and arts. Through the outdoor facilities of the KIKK in Town, the Market of Innovations or the conferences of artists and creators from around the world, they will be full of ideas about the economic and artistic deployment of new technologies. The next day, they will discover the ecosystem of Mons.

European Capital of Culture in 2015, the city of Mons has created, in the wake, a community of actors around the creative and cultural industries. From creative entrepreneurship to technological innovation through public testing in a museum environment, the spotlight will be on innovation in all its forms.

Delegations from Finland, the Basque Country, Italy, Slovakia and Greece will come to discover the Walloon creativity on 1st and 2nd November. Objective : drawing inspiration from, meeting, benchmarking, testing and capitalizing on a sector with major economic potential !

But what is CREADIS3 ? An initiative of some European regions that have capitalized on the potential of creative and cultural industries as vectors of economic development. After three years of exchange of experiences, mapping and analysis of the sector, the project provides two years for the implementation of concrete actions to support creative and cultural businesses in connection with the economic strategies of the regions concerned. In Wallonia, it is notably the creative hubs policy that is the core of the project. Innovative third places established in the urban centres of Wallonia, the Walloon creative hubs enable the meeting and collaboration between the different layers of the economic fabric and the different sectors, including that of the creative and cultural industries. Their goal is thus to create economic value by focusing on creativity as a determinant of innovation.

This is how the KIKK found itself at the centre of the creation of the creative hub of Namur, the TRAKK, and how the city of Mons created the Creative Valley hub at the centre of its ecosystem. Together with their partners (universities, local development agencies, specialized non-profit groupings), they address and support innovative and creative entrepreneurship by driving a whole local community beyond preconceived ideas.

With the CREADIS3 project, Wallonia is positioning itself at the core of the European and regional strategies that aim to challenge the traditional process of innovation through the sector of the creative and cultural industries. At the KIKK Festival and in Mons, this is precisely what we are talking about : « exploring, questioning, experimenting, comparing, in an interdisciplinary way, the multiple uses of new technologies to reveal the challenges of a moving world ».