Projects

IDEA Consult was commissioned by the Department of Culture, Youth, and Media to evaluate the subsidy program for Innovative Cultural Partner Projects (2017-2023). This program aims to stimulate new cross-sectoral collaborations between cultural and non-cultural actors and to explore new topics and questions through innovative projects.

We have listed some of the most important findings:

• We have noticed significant interest in cross-sectoral collaboration, but also many obstacles to getting started. There is a need for a more finely tuned set of instruments that offers broader and more diverse forms of support beyond just funding.
• There is a need to clarify the objectives and evaluation criteria of the subsidy line as an instrument. Currently, they lead to differences in interpretation and confusion among both cultural sector actors and application assessors about how to understand innovation and cross-sectoral collaboration with a non-cultural partner.
• Since the introduction of the instrument in 2017, new policy initiatives and instruments have been introduced that also support cross-sectoral collaborations and innovation. This has created uncertainty among cultural organizations about where their projects fit best. There is a need for a ‘zoom-out’ exercise to further analyze and refine the positioning of innovative partner projects in relation to these other instruments.
• The instrument has a limited total budget and is still not well known. An increase in the budget, along with more efforts in communication and guidance, is desirable to improve the results and impact of the instrument.
• Although project participants report positive effects in terms of network expansion and knowledge exchange, the projects have been criticized for leaving few structural effects behind. Most projects are not anchored in a sustainable way, and the impact on the broader cultural sector is limited: the lessons learned from the projects are rarely documented and shared across the cultural field. There is a need for more knowledge sharing and experience exchange regarding both the process and the results of cross-sectoral collaboration.

Our most important recommendation is to offer more phased support by splitting the instrument into two types of funding: a process-oriented subsidy aimed at exploring a new cross-sectoral partnership, and a project-oriented subsidy aimed at cross-sectoral innovation. Both types of funding are explained in more detail in the report’s recommendations. The report also contains forty recommendations (summarized) aimed at:

• Refine the objectives of the subsidy program to clearly define which projects fit within the instrument and what impact is intended;
• Increasing and differentiate the resources to strengthen the impact opportunities of the instrument;
• Refining the application procedure;
• Better guidance on the subsidy line and more support in organizing project proposals and projects;
• Achieving increased knowledge sharing and valorization towards the broad cultural sector regarding the process, results and effects of projects.

Want to know more?  Read the management summary here.