European Commission Green Paper : Unlocking the Potential of Creative and Cultural Industries

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This Green Paper is a welcome contribution to the ongoing debate about the new digital economy, and the respective roles of networks, creative content and public authorities in that economy.

At the EU level, this debate is of course largely centred around the EU’s Digital Agenda, and we regard this Green Paper as a welcome signal that the interests of the creative sector will remain centre stage in the Digital Agenda.

In terms of this response, the ACT is a member of the Creative & Media Business Alliance, and we fully endorse the comments made in the CMBA response to the Green Paper. This response is mainly to add a couple of points where we feel the television sector has specific experience.

As the Green Paper itself states, “factory floors are progressively being replaced by creative communities whose raw material is their ability to imagine, create and innovate“.

Commercial broadcasters welcome in particular the inclusive nature of the definition of “creative and cultural industries” used by the Green Paper, clearly capturing the production and distribution of television programming within the definition of “CCI” (see page 5) and avoiding the trap of an over-prescriptive definition of which creative content can be regarded as “cultural”.

However, our assumption is that many of the issues raised, and questions asked, in the Green Paper are ones which we are not competent to answer, going as they do either to issues of research and education policy or being aimed at local, regional or national public authorities. We will restrict ourselves to a few areas where we feel we have relevant experience to contribute.