Pro-CCS

Promoting entrepreneurship and access to financing in the cultural and creative sector

Project Context

The cultural and creative sectors (CCS) constitute one of the most dynamic industries in the European Union and the global economy. These sectors have tremendous economic value, representing 4.2% of the European Union’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and creating 7.4 million jobs, mainly employing young people. The cultural and creative sectors are important for ensuring the continuous development of societies and are at the heart of the creative economy. Based on knowledge, creativity, and individual talent, they generate significant economic wealth. More importantly, they are fundamental to a shared sense of European identity, culture, and values. Economically, they show above-average growth and create jobs, while simultaneously strengthening social cohesion.

The CCS largely consist of micro-enterprises, non-profit organizations, and creative professionals who often do not have access to financial support and may lack the specific skills to realize and manage their entrepreneurial ideas. Moreover, the crisis caused by Covid-19 has been particularly critical for the CCS due to the sudden and massive loss of earning opportunities. The suspension of activities and the cancellation (or postponement) of events, shows, and festivals have generated a chain of negative effects, difficult to compensate for even when it was possible to reopen places and organize events.

Project Objectives

The challenges in accessing financing represent one of the most critical obstacles to the growth of the sector. Among others, access to financing is hindered by specific characteristics of the CCS organizations: lack of tangible assets, high market demand uncertainty, value generation over long and uncertain periods, lack of knowledge of financing opportunities, etc.

The Pro-CCS project supports the entire CCS sector by strengthening the skills of professionals active in the CCS and aims to connect the cultural and creative sectors with the financial sector to facilitate access to credit for the CCS. The project will create dedicated channels to provide solid information on the economic potential of the CCS to financial intermediaries so that they can overcome traditional distrust in the sector and support its growth. Furthermore, the project will develop training that will equip the CCS with the necessary knowledge to bridge the skills gap of professionals in the sector.

Project activities

The project will design and deliver 3 specific outcomes, aimed at facilitating the mutual understanding and cooperation between the financial tutors and professionals dealing with microfinance for culture and the professionals of the CCS looking for public or private financial support for the development of their business idea:

A training course addressed to financial tutors, BDS providers, trainers and mentors active in the micro-funding field. The training course will promote the acquisition of transversal and complementary skills, which are necessary for improving the performance of trainers, tutors and mentors and their capacity to address the needs of CCS professionals, thus providing them with a comprehensive overview, guidance and initial training on all aspects of a business.
A training course addressed to professionals of the CCS (especially start-ups and micro enterprises) to provide them with specific transversal and technical skills about management, entrepreneurship, access to finance and business development.
Toolkit addressed to financial intermediators to support business start-up in the CCS. The toolkit will both offer technical support to financial intermediaries, providing them with specific skills to evaluate the loan request of CCS, as well as facilitate a change of perspective towards the CCS and its entrepreneurs, seeing them as key players in the development of a sustainable, networked and shared economy.

Involved Partners

The Pro-CCS project is led by the Ente Nazionale per il Microcredito, involving important organisations so as to constitute a powerful task force cooperating to address this challenge at the European level. The consortium is composed of 5 organisations from 4 different countries. It is characterised by a highly transversal nature, involving different types of organisations covering the full range of the activities foreseen by the project: a national public body (ENM, Italy) expert in the implementation of microfinance policies and tools at European and national level; an innovation and business centre (InnoGrowth, Bulgaria); a business incubator part of a worldwide network (Impact Hub Leipzig, Germany); European cultural network supporting the CCS at EU level (Culture Action Europe, Belgium) and a consultancy company (Euradia Italia) specialised in institutional relations, project management and communication.

Are you a professional in the cultural and creative sector?

Do you have a business idea or a creative project that needs funding?

Do you want to learn about the microcredit system and gain the skills to access the available funds?

Join the online course organized by Pro-CCS, the first European project for training in the cultural sector on microfinance!

The platform with training materials will be open from July 7 to 21, and you can access it at any time.

For more information and to register, click the button below:

apply

1/ November 2022
What is the Pro-CCS project?

2/ Mach 2023
What is meant by the cultural and creative sector?
What is its significance in terms of employment and wealth creation?
How can microcredit support cultural and creative enterprises?
The Pro-CCS project has explored these topics:

3/ April 2023
Do you work in the cultural and creative sector and want to turn your creativity into a sustainable business?
This summer, the Pro-CCS project will offer a free training course for industry professionals.

4/ November 2023