Cultural heritage as a basis for competitiveness: the 7th Creative Business Forum at EEF

18 September 2023

Cultural heritage as a basis for competitiveness: the 7th Creative Business Forum at EEF

The 7th Creative Business Forum was held as part of EEF 2023, organized by the Innosocium Foundation, the social platform of the Roscongress Foundation. The Spirit of Fire Academy became a strategic partner of the event. The forum events were united by the motto ‘Cultural Codes of the Economy: Revealing Identity Through Cooperation’. Ten discussion sessions were held on developing competitiveness based on the culture and heritage of indigenous peoples of the North, rethinking urbanism through creativity, and the effective use of human capital in economic development.

“This year’s Creative Business Forum demonstrated the effectiveness of current initiatives on socio-cultural development of the regions, implemented in the most dynamically progressing areas of creative entrepreneurship. The focus on the integration of traditional cultural codes of the North into local creative products shows an example of successful and effective support of ESG principles in the development of northern territories. This promising approach should be scaled up to other regions, aiming to strengthen the advantages of the unique cultural traditions of the peoples of Russia,” said Anton Kobyakov, Adviser to the President of the Russian Federation and Executive Secretary of the EEF Organizing Committee.

The participants discussed current trends, best practices and ways to develop the most important areas of the creative sphere of the modern economy, including the use of the region’s identity and cultural traditions as a basis for the creation of creative products, the development of the art market, and cooperation in the humanitarian sphere. Other topics included developing creative spaces and cinema as engines of regional economy, holding festivals as a way of urban development and investment in the region, improving the urban environment, creating conditions for the self-fulfilment of talented young people and supporting creative projects of indigenous peoples.

A film about the project ‘Soul of Russia. The North’ was screened to tell EEF participants about the work to preserve and promote the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples. The film reflects all the milestones of its development – from the first events in the format of an audio and visual culture festival that focused on the interest of creative industries in understanding and using the potential of the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples to the large-scale International Festival held at the Lenfilm Film Studio during SPIEF 2023. The film was produced by the administration of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District – Yugra and the Roscongress Foundation.

Regional film production was a particular focus of the Creative Business Forum programme. In partnership with the Spirit of Fire Academy, projects promoting new opportunities in the regional film industry were presented, including film start-ups by regional entrepreneurs and production solutions that support regional filmmaking. Pitching of the best film start-ups initiated by entrepreneurs from Siberia and the Far East took place. The audience demonstrated a growing interest in local cinema. The pitching showed the effectiveness of decentralized film production and confirmed the attractiveness of the regions’ unique natural locations for filming films of all genres.

The main social network and streaming service of the Creative Business Forum is VKontakte. The total number of views of broadcasts of Forum sessions in VKontakte exceeded 700,000.

Cultural heritage as a basis for competitiveness: the 7th Creative Business Forum at EEF

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