Creative Lenses was a major EU project that ran from 2015 to 2019. The aim was to make cultural organisations more resilient and sustainable by improving their business models and finding ways to develop their long-term strategic and innovative capabilities. A key issue was how to strengthen the financial sustainability of cultural organisations without forcing them to compromise their artistic integrity or their goals and values. Fundamental to the work was to identify which business models can be successful. The results can then be applied to a broad set of cultural actors across Europe. It was hoped that this would strengthen the social impact of organisations.

Katarina Scott from Future By Lund has participated in the work.

Creative Lenses works with both professional structures and independent cultural centres in Europe to investigate their business models. The organisations we examine often have an important position, for example they may operate in premises with large property values and be responsible for the transformation of entire neighbourhoods. We want to explore how they work in depth and come up with what are good business models for these types of institutions. It is not always straightforward, as it can range from very collective idea-driven organisations in the left wing to more capitalistic movements in central London.

Katarina Scott has also participated in a sub-project - catalyzt programme - which deals with business development of cultural centres. Katarina was a mentor partly to Kapelli in Helsinki and partly to Truc Sphérique in Stanica, Slovakia.

Creative Lenses included thirteen partners from nine countries. The project involved independent art and cultural centres, two universities as well as representatives of cities, networks and cultural actors, and the work was led from Kapelli in Helsinki Finland. But the foundation for the project was actually laid in Lund.

“Creative Lenses is based on a first effort made in Lund, when the municipality of Lund and Trans Europe Halles felt that there was a lack of knowledge, facts and statistics on how different European houses of culture are run,” says Katarina Scott. We did a fact study and obtained static data on 150 cultural organizations from all over Europe. With this knowledge as a basis, we in a new wider consortium went further within Creative Lenses to learn more.

Creative Lenses will end in April 2019.

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More films from when Creative Lenses held a conference in Lund in 2017.

CreativeLenses 1 - “The What, Why...” by Paul Bogen

‍CreativeLenses 2 - “Value Co-creation in Culture and the Arts” by Lucy Kimbell, University of the Arts London, UK

CreativeLenses 3 - “How to map your why?” By Bobby Forshell Katarina Scott

CreativeLicenses 4 Catalyst Programme

CreativeLenses 5 - Challenging Business Models by Sophia Alexandersson

CreativeLenses 6 - Challenging Business Models by Andrea, Carolina, Sofia

CreativeLenses 7 - Challenging Business Models by Gitte Nielsen

CreativeLenses 8 - Challenging Business Models by Kesten Thomsen

CreativeLenses 9 - Panel

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Text about the summary of the project