Policy Lab: Cultural Heritage Institutions within Open Innovation Ecosystems

It includes two online sessions of learning, exchanging and co-creating to shape concrete recommendations to enable cultural heritage institutions to claim an active role in open innovation ecosystems.

ekip is an EU-funded flagship-project implementing principles of open innovation to establish a policy recommendation engine driven by partners and the active involvement of 40+ CCI-networks. The main goal of ekip is to promote the development and adoption of policy recommendations for CCIs. This enables CCI actors to participate in and contribute to the impact the recommendation has on complex innovation processes.

About this policy lab

The ekip eight policy lab will explore the opportunities and challenges around the role of cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) within open innovation ecosystems. It will also look at ongoing policy initiatives, critical factors to be addressed and actions needed to ensure the development of thriving open innovation ecosystems.

CHIs often act as connectors. They bridge policy and practice, local knowledge and expert discourse, memory and experimentation. These roles are essential for building strong innovation ecosystems. Yet they are rarely supported. Understanding where and how CHIs operate within these ecosystems, what roles they play, what constraints they face, and what support they need, is a crucial first step towards better recognition.

This Policy Lab will examine how to recognise and strengthen the role of CHIs in innovation ecosystems. It will explore how policies can support innovation as a social and embedded process. Key questions include: How can we develop better indicators of impact? How do we support community-rooted innovation without imposing standardised models? How can CHIs be empowered as equal partners in shaping transitions?

The event is open to the following stakeholders:

• CHI practitioners and decision makers
• CCI-practitioners/representatives involved in, or with an interest in R&I-projects with CHIs
• Policy makers on regional/local and EU-level involved in heritage-related implementation and research, innovation-policies and instruments
• Funding organisations
• Clusters and key intermediaries in the ecosystem
• Civil society-stakeholders involved in cultural heritage innovation
• Academia undertaking research in the field of cultural heritage innovation

How to take part?

The policy lab will take place online in two consecutive sessions, followed by an in-person community review, each time building on the previous session. Participants are encouraged to attend both online sessions. The organisers hope you can also join in-person in the Netherlands for the community review workshop co-organised with EIT CC.

• Policy Lab session 1: 1 September (ONLINE – 10:00am – 12:00 pm CEST). In this session, experts will explore the role of CHIs in open innovation ecosystems, heritage-led innovation practices today and the challenges and gaps in policies.
• Policy Lab session 2: 4 September (ONLINE – 10:00am – 12:00 pm CEST). The policy session will build on the themes from the first session and developing policy recommendations on supporting CHIs in open innovation ecosystems and heritage-led practices for tomorrow.

Following the online webinars, an in-person session will be held on October 2nd to validate the policy recommendations. This event is co-organised with EIT Culture & Creativity.

For more information, please visit the website. Or register directly here.