The European Parliament has approved the European Commission’s new Creative Europe programme, with a budget of €1.46Bn over the next seven years. This is a 9% increase on current funding and is aimed at european culture, cinema, television, games, music, literature, performing arts, heritage and related areas.
It also explicitly states that this funding is open to video games projects…
There will be two events in Scotland in the coming week or two to outline how this funding will work and how it may be accessed by companies.
Creative Europe will provide funding for at least 250,000 artists and cultural professionals, 2,000 cinemas, 800 films and 4,500 book translations. It will also launch a new financial guarantee facility enabling small cultural and creative businesses to access up to €750 million in bank loans.
New actions for the MEDIA sub-programme include support for international co-production funds, video games and audience development, but no radical changes have been proposed for the changeover between MEDIA 2007 and Creative Europe. The main funding priorities continue to be training, development, TV programming, distribution, access to markets and festivals.
Creative Europe builds on the experience and success of the EU’s Culture and MEDIA programmes, which have supported the cultural and audiovisual sectors for more than 20 years. The new programme includes a Culture sub-programme, supporting performing and visual arts, heritage and other areas, and a MEDIA sub-programme, which will provide funding for the cinema and audiovisual sector.
The programme will allocate at least 56% of its budget for the MEDIA sub-programme and at least 31% for the Culture sub-programme. This broadly reflects the share of funding that the two areas currently receive. A maximum of 13% of the budget will be allocated to a new cross-sectoral strand, including the financing facility.
Agnieszka Moody, Director of MEDIA Desk UK said:
This fantastic news heralds a new priority for collaboration and partnership in Europe, encouraging closer relationships to be formed between audiovisual and other cultural and creative sectors. Increased financial support will enable a number of exciting and innovative new projects to come to fruition to the benefit of audience development across the UK and Europe, ensuring that UK films are seen in Europe and that UK audiences have access to European cinema.
The Creative Europe programme will be definitively adopted by the Council (28 Member States) in the weeks to come and will enter into force in January 2014. In order to speed up the application process, the Commission will publish the first calls for proposals in December 2013.
Cultural Contact Point and MEDIA Antenna Scotland are holding free events in Edinburgh and Glasgow to explain more about the programme, how funding will work and how Creative Europe can be accessed by companies in Scotland’s creative industries.
Tickets are still available for both events, but will go quickly once the wider creative world realises there are billions of dollars on the table for new creative projects.
SGN will be there, but we encourage every developer and games-related company in Scotland to sign up and come along to find out more. With funding a critical issue for many developers, this new programme could be an enormous opportunity for developers and games creators.
Sign up for Edinburgh (Wednesday 11th December, Waverley Gate, Edinburgh. 2pm-4pm)
Sign up for Glasgow (Thursday 12th December, Creative Scotland, 248 W George St. 11am-1pm)
