European Commission announces Creative Innovation Lab Program

Deadline: 20-Apr-23

The European Commission is seeking applications for the Creative Innovation Lab Program.

Objective

• The Creative Innovation Lab shall incentivise players from different cultural and creative sectors, including audiovisual, to design and test innovative solutions for key challenges, with a potential positive long-term impact on multiple cultural and creative sectors.
• Within the specific objective of promoting policy cooperation and innovative actions supporting all strands of the Programme, promoting a diverse, independent and pluralistic media environment and media literacy, thereby foresting freedom or artistic expression, intercultural dialogue and social inclusion, the priorities of the cross-sectoral strand shall include:
  • to encourage innovative approaches to content creation, access, distribution, and promotion across cultural and creative sectors and with other sectors, including by taking into account the digital transition, covering both market and non-market dimensions.

Priority

• The Cross Sectoral strand shall support the ‘creative innovation lab’, which shall:
  • encourage new forms of creation at the crossroads between different cultural and creative sectors, for example through experimental approaches and the use of innovative technologies;
  • foster innovative cross-sectoral approaches and tools which shall, where possible, encompass multilingual and social dimensions to facilitate the distribution, promotion and monetisation of, and access to, culture and creativity, including cultural heritage.
• The Creative Innovation Lab shall incentivise players from different cultural and creative sectors, including audiovisual, to design and test innovative solutions for key challenges, with a potential positive long-term impact on multiple cultural and creative sectors.

Funding Information

• The available call budget is EUR 5.438.131
• Projects should not normally exceed 24 months

Expected Results

• Development of innovative creative processes;
• Increased visibility, availability and diversity of European content in the digital age;
• Improved business models and use of data;
• Increased potential audience of European content in the digital age;
• Support greening and circular economy thinking, including innovation for sustainability, inclusion and well-being in line with the priorities of the New European Bauhaus.

Eligible Projects

• The InnovLab support shall support the design, development and/or spread of innovative tools, models or solutions applicable in the audiovisual and other cultural and creative sectors. Activities shall aim at supporting the competitiveness, greening process, cooperation, circulation, visibility, availability, diversity and/or audience across sectors. Such activities shall contain a high potential of replicability in audiovisual and other cultural and creative sectors.
• Cross-sectoral cooperation within the creative and/or cultural sectors, including the audiovisual sector is at the heart of the Call. Therefore, applications must clearly demonstrate the extent of the cross-sectoral approach, the conditions for its implementation and the expected benefits for the sectors covered.
• Applications should present adequate strategies to ensure more sustainable and more environmentally-respectful industry and to ensure gender balance, inclusion, diversity and representativeness.
• A wide spectrum of organisations will be invited to participate, including private and public entities, tech companies and start-ups, audiovisual, cultural and creative organisations. The participation of business incubators and accelerators shall be encouraged, to provide space and time for creative ideas to be shaped.

Eligibility Criteria

• In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
  • be legal entities (public or private bodies)
  • be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
    • Creative Europe Participating Countries:
      • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
      • non-EU countries
    • be established in one of the countries participating in the Creative Europe Programme and owned directly or indirectly, wholly or by majority participation, by nationals from such countries. When a company is publicly listed companies, the location of the stock exchange will in principle determine its nationality.
  • Beneficiaries and affiliated entities must register in the Participant Register — before submitting the proposal — and will have to be validated by the Central Validation Service (REA Validation). For the validation, they will be requested to upload documents showing legal status and origin.
• Specific Cases
  • Natural persons — Natural persons are NOT eligible (with the exception of selfemployed persons, i.e. sole traders, where the company does not have legal personality separate from that of the natural person.
  • International organisations — International organisations are eligible. The rules on eligible countries do not apply to them.
  • Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees for the protection of the EU financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons.
  • EU bodies — EU bodies (with the exception of the European Commission Joint Research Centre) can NOT be part of the consortium.
  • Associations and interest groupings — Entities composed of members may participate as ‘sole beneficiaries’ or ‘beneficiaries without legal personality.
  • Creative Europe Desks (CEDs) — The host organisations of Creative Europe Desks are eligible as coordinator or beneficiary in open calls, if they have procedures to segregate the project management and the information provision functions and if they are able to demonstrate cost separation (i.e. that their project grants do not cover any costs which are covered by their other grant). This requires the following:
    • use of analytical accounting which allows for a cost accounting management with cost allocation keys and cost accounting codes AND application of these keys and codes to identify and separate the costs (i.e. to allocate them to either one of the two grants)
    • recording of all real costs incurred for the activities that are covered by the two grants (including the indirect costs)
    • allocation of the costs in a way that leads to a fair, objective and realistic result.

For more information, visit EC.