In a couple of weeks time I am attending C&binet (The Creativity and Business International Network), a three day conference bringing together creative businesses and leaders from around the globe.

C&binet was created by the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport as part of Creative Britain's 26 commitments to bring the creative industries into the mainstream of the UK economy. The event's themes include access to finance, new business models, developing talent and securing creative rights. I am participating in a digital economy fringe panel led by Simon Evans of Creative Clusters and was asked by Alastair Findlay of the C&binet team to put together some thoughts for the conference blog on what I hope it will achieve:

What can C&binet achieve?

Producing a purposeful international dialogue around the challenges and opportunities of the creative economy is no small undertaking given the diverse set of interests, disciplines, business models and organisational cultures at play. What then are my hopes for C&binet? It is this very diversity (in attendee and theme) which plays into the concerns of Watershed, a ‘cross art form’ media centre established in Bristol in 1982:

As we know, the creative industries are going through a period of rapid change. As technologies converge and platforms proliferate, finding time and space to develop content, applications and services which capture imagination and deliver value has become even more tricky.

Across our artistic programme, through investment and support schemes like Media Sandbox and in The Pervasive Media Studio (an open innovation research space), Watershed seeks to develop meaningful opportunities for future, emerging and established talent. By joining up creative businesses, artists, researchers, technology firms and (critically) an engaged population of early adopters, we are able to link knowledge, explore new markets and produce innovative ideas, products and processes. But this space is high-risk and there is both challenge and opportunity in responding to demand with an open approach. A need for new thinking is required:

Public service content for instance is being redefined by the inexorable spread of digital connectivity.  Digital Britain says 'Public service content in Digital Britain now comes from a much wider range of sources than in the analogue age’. Like Tate, the Royal Opera House and RSC, Watershed’s creative content now reaches a wider public online than through our physical building.

The combination of digital disruption and the UK’s global advantage in high-quality arts and broadcast provision provides huge opportunity: to engage more widely, to explore the pervasive power of 'prosumer' creative energy and to pioneer new forms of economic, cultural and social value. But significant culture shifts will need to occur to enable meaningful, equitable models of collaboration in this space.

For the UK the policy challenge is how we resource risk in a public funding climate that defaults to tangible known and measurable outcomes in conventional economy terms.

To push the boundaries of new technologies, engage the broadest pool of talent and stay internationally competitive we must involve a diverse range of producers and users from across the value chain, understanding that current mechanisms of support and development will be challenged to their core.

My hope is that C&binet will inform and sustain a genuine and meaningful commitment (from those working in the creative economy as well as from policy makers) to cross-sectoral collaboration which responds to this fast moving world with open, engaged ways of thinking and working.

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If you want to get involved, C&binet will be streamed live. You’ll be able to comment on the sessions during the live streaming and feed in to the debate. You can also submit your comments and questions in advance and follow the ongoing debate through the blog and via the c&binet twitter feed.