The Project
reCreating Europe aims at bringing a ground-breaking contribution to the understanding and management of copyright in the DSM, and at advancing the discussion on how IPRs can be best regulated to facilitate access to, consumption of and generation of cultural and creative products.
The focus of such an exercise is on, inter alia, users’ access to culture, barriers to accessibility, lending practices, content filtering performed by intermediaries, old and new business models in creative industries of different sizes, sectors and locations, experiences, perceptions and income developments of creators and performers, who are the beating heart of the EU cultural and copyright industries, and the emerging role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the creative process.
These constitute the basis for reCreating Europe’s policy recommendations and best practices.
To fill the knowledge gap and grasp the complexity of the problems analysed, reCreating Europe couples the mapping of regulatory solutions, stakeholders’ perceptions and coping strategies with the collection of a wide range of data sets portraying the impact of digitization and copyright on patterns of consumption, creation and dissemination of cultural and creative content, their qualitative and quantitative evaluation, and the development of innovative analytical and measurement solutions. Its activities revolve around four main pillars.
MAPPING
reCreating Europe provides an unprecedented cross-national mapping of multi-level regulatory responses including both public policies and private rules or practices having an impact on access to culture, cultural/creative production, and growth and competitiveness of creative industries. This analysis will be situated within the broader conceptual framework of democratization of culture, with a stakeholder-focused analysis. reCreating Europe also identifies coping/alternative strategies of different categories of end users (including particularly vulnerable users, which are often neglected by mainstream research projects), individual creators and performers, cultural and heritage institutions, niche creative communities, and different sizes and sectors of creative industries vis-à-vis IPRs pitfalls and constraints impairing their interests and hindering their goals.
MEASURING
To support evidence-based policy making, reCreating Europe develops innovative methods to measure the impact of the digital market on extent, forms and content of production and consumption of cultural/creative goods and services, coupling qualitative and quantitative methods, within the framework of a participatory research strategy. Together with traditional market actors, particular attention is devoted to old and new intermediaries, vulnerable users, niche sectors and creative communities/networks, micro entities and SMEs.
ASSESSING TECHNOLOGIES
Due to their key importance in the digital environment, reCreating Europe performs a legal, economic and technological mapping and evaluation of technological measures of protection, access-enabling technologies and content-filtering algorithms, in order to assess their impact on cultural diversity, access to culture and creation of cultural/creative value.
SHAPING THE FUTURE
Last, building on its findings, reCreating Europe offers a set of policy recommendations and best practices, the production of which involves stakeholders where relevant, with the aim of democratizing access to culture and foster access for vulnerable groups such as people belonging to ethnic or linguistic minorities and people with disabilities, while effectively sustaining the growth and competitiveness of rich and diverse cultural and creative industries.
Recommendations and practices target:
- the removal of bottlenecks to digital access, accessibility and creation of cultural and creative content posed by copyright law and territoriality, and the current incapability of copyright to fully represent the diversity of artistic and cultural communities, networks and sectors;
- the exploitation of yet-untapped opportunities offered by the digitization of cultural/creative works and the digital single market (DMS) to enhance the democratization of culture;
- the embedment of copyright and technological measures within the broader realm of cultural policies to achieve a balance between access, protection and incentive to creation, and to enhance cultural diversity.
Compared to previous studies, one of reCreating Europe’s main strengths is the parallel, comprehensive focus on five key groups of stakeholders – end-users, cultural and heritage institutions, individual authors and performer – creative industries, intermediaries -, whose needs are assessed along intertwined research patterns, and through a cross-disciplinary approach that innovatively merges different methodologies within the framework of a participatory research strategy. This stakeholder-based analysis is vital to capture the complexity of the phenomena and questions posed by the call for three basic reasons:
- It gives the possibility to look at oft-neglected subjects, such as vulnerable users and niche cultural/creative communities and sectors, offering a cross-cutting picture of the effects of digitisation, copyright and the DMS on access to culture and the creation of cultural and creative value.
- It helps to make a contextual assessment of the legal, economic and technological factors influencing access, creation and dissemination, avoiding the usual limitation of the analysis to a single discipline, stakeholder or legal domain.
- It places emphasis on alternative coping strategies adopted by stakeholders to fulfill their access, (re)creation and dissemination needs, analysing the innovative and positive contribution of such responses instead of simply treating them as distortions to be corrected by policy reforms.
reCreating Europe is supported by a consortium of renowned experts in the field of copyright, geography and economics of creativity, sociology of innovation, communication and media studies, cultural policies, Open Knowledge and access to culture, cultural policies, minority rights and disability rights. Partners will bring in their knowledge, expertise and results of previous projects, and use it as a springboard to answer to the blend of foundational and innovative research questions underlying the cross-disciplinary tasks envisioned by reCreating Europe to fulfil its goals.
Logo
The reCreating Europe logo is the symbol of a lightbulb. The bulb shape is comprised of eleven small, yellow stars to symbolise the European Union. The lower part of the lightbulb is designed with simple lines and is an accessible dark blue colour. Click on the logo to hear an audio description.
Project structure
reCreating Europe follows a stakeholder-centric structure. Each vertical Work Package (WP) focuses on a key stakeholder group:
- WP2 on end users
- WP3 on authors and performers
- WP4 on creative industries
- WP5 on GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums)
- WP6 on intermediaries
To support the project’s vertical WPs, reCreating Europe has two horizontal WPs:
- WP1 on Management and Coordination, which is responsible for overall project coordination, scientific management and administrative management
- WP7 on Dissemination, Engagement and Outreach, which is responsible for disseminating project-related information and results, and fostering the engagement of key stakeholders and the general public through a wide array of activities and tools.
