Over 100 international civil society, private sector and government representatives gathered at the 7th ASEF Public Forum: Enabling Crossovers held on 18 October 2014 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands for discussions on the importance of creative industries for sustainable growth and development in Asia and Europe. The Public Forum was organised by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) in partnership with Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Netherlands and Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Netherlands and with the support of the European Cultural Foundation (ECF).
The Forum was formally opened by HE Jet BUSSEMAKER, Minister for Education, Culture and Science, the Netherlands. It was organised in the framework of the 6th Asia-Europe Culture Ministers’ Meeting (19-21 October 2014, Rotterdam, the Netherlands). The Forum also marked the opening of the ASEM Culture Network Programme, a gathering of 40 cultural professionals from Asia and Europe for four days of workshops and site visits across the Netherlands, organised by Het Nieuwe Instituut.
The key messages that emerged from the Forum highlighted the role of creative industries in enabling crossovers between arts, business, science and education, the impact of the resultant innovation on helping achieve sustainable growth, and the scope for international collaboration and co-creation between Asia and Europe. These messages were presented at the 6th Asia-Europe Culture Ministers’ Meeting and the ministers expressed their appreciation and positively received the ideas and messages. They also acknowledged the ASEF-commissioned publication, Enabling Crossovers: Good Practices in the Creative Industries as a useful input to the ministerial meeting. ASEF’s role in supporting knowledge exchange between Asia and Europe and fostering bi-regional co-operation was also acknowledged in the Chair’s Statement of the ministerial meeting. In particular, the Ministers valued positively the function of ASEF in translating key recommendations of the 6th Culture Ministers’ Meeting into concrete activities such as the Experts Meeting and Public Forum series.
The programme and reports of the Forum are available in the Documents section of this webpage. The concept note of the ASEM Culture Network Programme and brief profiles of the 40 participating professionals are also available in this section.
The 7th ASEF Public Forum is part of a long-running dialogue series on policy issues of mutual interest and common relevance for Asia and Europe. Past Experts’ Meetings and Public Forums have taken place in Hanoi, Viet Nam (2013), Yangon, Myanmar (2013), Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2012), Melbourne, Australia (2011), Seoul, Korea (2011) and Amsterdam, Netherlands (2010).
The next meeting in this series, Cities: Living Labs for Culture? – 8th ASEF Public Forum on Creative Cities in Asia and Europe (24 November 2015, Gwangju, Korea) will provide inputs to the discussions at the upcoming 7th Asia-Europe Culture Ministers’ Meeting.
You can follow the conversation on social media at #?ASEFPublicForum7 and ?#?ASEFforum8
On 20 January 2016, HE Ms Jet BUSSEMAKER, Minister of Education, Culture and Science, the Netherlands wrote the article titled The Economic and Social Significance of Creativity, to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Asia-Europe Meeting. In her article, she reinforced her message that “one of the reasons why the market is looking at the creative industries [is] to provide creative solutions for societal problems”.
This article is part of the ASEM 20th Anniversary Publication on “Celebrating 20 Years of Asia-Europe Relations”. The publication is a collection of articles by leaders from Asia and Europe on the past, present and future of ASEM. The book will be launched at the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit (ASEM11) in 2016 in Mongolia.
