Value of culture in the West

Philippe Kern

In culture and creative industries is almost everybody starting from the same level. There is no country or region that has developed the ultimate mechanism or structure or processes to help develop culture and creative industries. It’s a new area and everybody is coming with his own strains and weaknesses. From my experiences if I compare Western and Eastern Europe, I can feel energy in East. Programs are managed by young, aware people trusted with a lot of responsibility and you can feel a lot of passion, new ideas, willingness to share, to learn and to develop their own things. Another advantage of the East is the fact that you can start almost from scratch and you have less constraint. A lot of culture investment in the West is going into heritage preservation or with a view to attract tourists and therefore it limits the ability of making the cultural investment broader. I am not saying this is not important but I am saying that people in East can probably be bolder, be more innovative because of the fact that they are starting from a different position. I would encourage people not to look into the West as the example because there is no example. The West is sometimes little bit too traditional in the way of looking on culture and is maybe limited in its apprehension of the value of culture.

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Philippe Kern

Philippe Kern

Founder and managing director of KEA European Affairs in Brussels, Belgium

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