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Cultural and Creative Industries at the Forefront of Circularity
Cultural and Creative industries can be a catalyst for growth and change. The potential for crossover amongst creative industries and new areas of economic opportunity are of special interest to the city of Maastricht. Through surveys*, we reached out to Cultural and Creative companies on their insight into circularity and health and wellbeing.
Circularity
There is great interest among CCI to increase the use of new materials, and the use of bio-materials. Brightlands, a set of innovation campuses working in the fields of chemistry, health and sustainability, has the opportunity to connect with local creatives and support their need for sustainable materials. As individuals, entrepreneurs feel that they are of little interest as clients, and so feel sidelined by bio-material creators. Likeminded entrepreneurs highlight their desire to connect, aiding collective negotiation and adoption of new materials.
The Art Gallery Coronavirus Survey conducted by Rachel Pownall and published in the Art Newspaper has received attention from other major publications. Both the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have quoted the research when writing articles about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the art market.
An article published in the Economist, focused on art-secured lending, featured a quote from Rachel Pownall.
The article explored the phenomenon of art-secured lending which in the past decade has garnered significant interest as it enables collectors to leverage their art collection, making art, typically a very illiquid asset, much more liquid.
Art secured loans come both from established private banks such as Bank of America Private Bank or specialised lenders such as Athena. Rachel Pownall commented on limited nature of specialised lenders as much of the art that would be accepted as collateral, works typically worth $2million by well-known artists, are in the hands of the super-rich clients of private banks.
For the moment, the overwhelming majority of art-backed loans take place in America, it will therefore be interesting to see how the market evolves in Europe.
Read the article here: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/07/06/borrowing-against-art-is-growing-at-a-stunning-rate
An important aspect of the Made2Measure project has been to research the development of the cultural and creative industries in the last few years. For our report Mapping Maastricht, we have used CBS Microdata in order to map the development of number of companies, FTEs, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial profit in the sector. We depict the situation in Maastricht and compare it to the Netherlands as a whole, the urbanised areas of the Netherlands (Randstad), cities comparable to Maastricht such as Eindhoven or Arnhem, and to the rest of South-Limburg.
For a quick overview of our research and the highlights of what we found, check out the brochure.
For more in-depth information, the full report can be downloaded here or here (full resolution).
If you have any questions or comments, please contact us through the contact form.
For her bachelor thesis, UCM student Helen Verploegen did research on how to use cognitive psychology to promote purchasing sustainable clothes. As fast fashion is growing, it’s counterpart sustainable clothing is becoming more and more important as well. Local designers often sell sustainable clothing, as they produce locally and pay attention to the materials used. There’s also an increasing amount of sustainable brands and retailers. However, as Helen’s research indicates, there can be quite some barriers for consumers to choose for sustainable clothing. The choice range is smaller and products are often more costly. Based on her research, Helen has developed a number of guidelines retailers and designers can use to convince their customers in purchasing sustainable clothing.
To download the full set of guidelines, click here
The report describes the development of the cultural and creative industries in Maastricht in terms of companies, FTE and entrepreneurs. The time period in question is 2009 until 2016 or 2015, depending on the data available. The full report will be available on this website in the coming week. A brochure with highlights, insights and challenges will be distributed in the city. If you are interested in receiving one, please contact us!
On October 2nd and 3rd we will host the second edition of the Conference on Creative and Cultural Industries, in collaboration with The Artist and the Others.
More information on the conference
TEFAF have asked Maastricht University to prepare their Annual Art Market Report 2017, an essential part of the report is understanding the current situation of art dealers in the industry. Their feedback is crucial in helping to provide practical solutions to the most pressing challenges facing the art dealer industry.
As Made2Measure is part of Maastricht University, our team members have the responsibility to supervise master thesis students. Topics vary largely, but recently Marina supervised a very interesting thesis from the Made2Measure perspective. Roos Otten wrote about the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on financial performance in the apparel industry. Roos made a very informative executive summary of her thesis which you can find here: Executive summary_CSRFashion
They have been on the Flickr-account of The Artist and the Others for a while, but now also on the Made2Measure website: the photos of Everyone is an Artist which took place on September 27th 2016. All speakers are on there and maybe you can even spot yourself!
Photos taken by Joris Hilterman