Create To Gather

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The present project, entitled Create To Gather was developed by the project partners, LP1 on the Romanian side of the border and PP2 on the Hungarian side of the border as a joint cross-border approach to develop the members of the local communities and local economy in order to reach a long-term positive effect on both employment-friendly growth and cross-border cooperation within the eligible BHB Euroregion.  According to the findings of a survey conducted in 2016 on the site of the Lead Partner, in Romania only 4,48% of the active population is employed in creative industries, while in Western Europe, for example Great Britain or Finland this proportion is almost double,  7,9% and 8,2%, where “the dimension of creative industries have exceeded other sectors of the economy by far from the perspective of their weight in the GDP”, according to Attitudes towards Creativity and the Creative Industries in Romania published in a study by The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies. It has also revealed that 79.25% of the respondents (106 sample of young persons aged between 18 and 30) considered that they had the necessary skills to work in CI (creative industries) and would like to work in CI. According to a publication by the Government of Romania in 2016, “the GDP contribution of the Creative Industries sector overcame agriculture by 0.1 points in 2013 and reached a level of 7% in 2014.” The same publication shared a list of top cities in CI and unfortunately Oradea is not part of the list while the only CB city on the list is Timisoara. The publication also stated that the main sector of Creative Industries in Romania is represented by software and informational services 57% and creative arts and entertainment 21%. It is quite visible from the publication that creative industries have a very high economic potential as “the net margin was above national economy average in 2015, at 11.64% of the total turnover. The most profitable segment was Arts with a net margin of 20.8%. ” According to the findings of The Research Centre on Interethnic Relations (CCRIT) of Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, the biggest problems creative industry operators face regarding entrepreneurship are related to the administration and bureaucracy, the lack of state-support, funds and capital, lack of adequate infrastructure. The situation is quite similar in Hungary. According to the 2015 survey of GEM, Hungary scored last regarding the population’s entrepreneurial knowledge and skills within the Eastern-European countries which has a strong influence on start-up businesses. According to the same study, only 7.92% of the active population has a new or just forming business, which is lower to the previous three years. In terms of product and technological innovation, Hungary is within the last of the EU members. According to the data collected by GEM, Hungary is the last one in the Central and Eastern European countries regarding the necessary entrepreneurial skills and knowledge to start a business, only 38,76% of the surveyed population think that they have the skills. While Romanians have a very positive opinion about entrepreneurship as a career opportunity, 72,42% of the population formulated a positive answer, in Hungary only 48.35% of the population consider starting a business a career opportunity. The Széchenyi Plan 2020 actively focuses on the establishment of incubator spaces, creative expositions, the support of creative clusters. According to The European Cluster Observatory 2011 the growth of creative industries between 2003-2008 in Hungary scored -3,57%, resulting as last in the countries observed.  According to a focus-group meeting organised in Oradea in December 2017, the participating creative industry operators highlighted a few barriers in developing their businesses: the lack of knowledge in terms of administration and registration, the best form of legal entity, the need for trainings and know-hows, the demand for a common networking space, mentoring and sharing experience, the use of marketing tools in the online sphere, brand, identity.  Based on the findings of the research, in the development of the project the partners identified three core problems in the creative fields, which are reflected in the data cited above: 1.         The lack of entrepreneurial skills, competences and knowledge 2.         Segmented marketing (strategies/activities) and the lack of well-defined business identity 3.         The lack of cost effective, value added creative and innovative quality products and services available in the CB area caused by the lack of professionally equipped space and specific skills and competences The partners drafted the project idea focusing on the abovementioned problems, defining the objectives that will answer the common territorial challenges faced in the CB area and tried to identify the areas of interventions for the issues that mutually interact and result in an unexploited and stuck market. One of the key problems is the lack of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills. Many of the operators in the market only possess the expertise to create these creative and innovative products, as stated in the study conducted by the University of Bucharest, but lack the capital and most importantly the valuable knowledge that would lead them towards starting and advancing their business. The project partners aim to tackle this problem by organising online entrepreneurial trainings for creative industry operators in order to contribute to self-employment and entrepreneurship. Creative industry operators usually experience the negative effects of not having a well-defined business identity and marketing strategy, because missing these two, they can hardly enter a market and find their potential consumers, especially in a field, where both producers and consumers have to interact in order to develop it into a successful market. The project partners aim to support the activities of creative industry operators by giving them the opportunity to target their consumers thanks to a brand and marketing strategy that will be developed in the project. Apart from that, the partners aim to develop a product and service platform where the registered companies will promote their products and services. The PPS aim to establish two creative coworking spaces, one in Debrecen and one in Oradea in order to facilitate and stimulate the creation of value-added creative products. Apart from that, the partners plan to facilitate their work not only by equipment, but by continuous mentoring and training new labour force for future employment. The trained labour force is crucial for the economic growth of these fresh businesses as their financial situation and capital cannot cover the expenses of training labour force.

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