The Role of Cultural and Creative Industries Sector for Post-COVID Recovery

Wismar University of Applied Sciences, Wismar Business School, 23966 Wismar, Germany

Abstract

Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) have been intensively studied within the last decades due to their high economic growth potential and positive impact on innovation. In recent years, research shows increasing efforts to unfold CCIs’ potential for innovation partnerships in cross-sectoral cooperation with traditional companies. This classical role of CCI has been discussed in the new context in the frame of COVID-19. Here, the CCI sector itself had to find other channels to meet their clients, but besides that, an extended role of the CCI sector for post-COVID recovery is debated by several key players, including OECD. The paper analyses the current socio-economic situation that is still shadowed by the ongoing COVID pandemic and discusses sustainable and inclusive growth paths of a post-COVID recovery driven by creativity concepts. The Baltic Sea Region (BSR) as the first macro-region with its own macro-regional strategy and its strong innovation power, domination of SME sector, low population density, its heterogeneous business structures resulting from its characteristic mixture of old and new EU Member States can be considered as a test lab for the whole Europe. From the CCI perspective, its long Hanse history that generated a common Baltic identity opens the opportunity to deploy common cultural approaches for successful inter-cultural recovery concepts.