Wallonia, creative district! European recognition

In October 2010, the Walloon Government launched the Creative Wallonia framework programme to place creativity and innovation at the heart of the economy and society at large in Wallonia.

The "European Creative Districts" call for proposals was launched in 2012. Forty-four regions from around the EU came forward to be awarded "creative district" status. Ultimately, the big winners were Wallonia and Tuscany.

  Wallonia leads the example

In a way, Wallonia will be serving as a "living laboratory", with one aim in mind: to efficiently implement and prove the merit of good practices based on the "creative industries" in order to rekindle the region’s economic competitiveness.

The consortium, made up of 5 Walloon players at the cutting edge of innovation and creativity (the Operational General Directorate for the Economy, Employment and Research of Wallonia (SPW/DG06), Wallonie Design, S'art Invest, the Walloon Agency for Telecommunications, and ID Campus, makes a point of affirming Creative Wallonia as a "Large-scale demonstrator" by boosting the dynamics that exist whilst opening up the region to the international world of trade and industry.

  Concrete actions

The Walloon project, dubbed “Wallonia Creative District”, involves a host of streamlined actions that are based around 4 main thrusts:

• “Mutual transnational Policy Learning”: the benchmarking, prospection, exchange and analysis of the role played by the creative and cultural industries (CCIs) in the traditional economy,
• “Better Business Support”: to demonstrate and raise awareness of the potential strengths of the CCIs among business in other sectors of industry,
• "Better Financial Support”: to meet the specific challenges encountered by the CCIs in the area of access to funding,
• "Facilitating clusters and networking activities”: to strengthen and accelerate the development of the value chains of the Walloon CCIs in a European context.

Rewards for Wallonia and for Europe

From January 2013 to July 2015, Wallonia will be rolling out innovation-led programmes by forging transregional partnerships and by stepping up opportunities for collaborative efforts for the public and private players in the Walloon region.

Wallonia and Tuscany will serve as a test case so as to roll out the principle to other EU regions.