Innovationlabs – 16 projects selected

24 February 2022

Topics range from blockchain for the housing market to continuing development of a database for sustainable artist materials and exploring hybrid forms for dramatic expression. Most of the projects experiment with new formats and forms of collaboration, from which new artistic expressions can emerge.

Selection
Block Foundation – Meta-Estate Lab
Can blockchain make a difference in the housing market? Together with partners Arcam and ZHA CODE, Zaha Hadid Architects’ think tank that focuses on computational design, Block Foundation aims to explore and test the possibilities of decentralized financing by means of prototypes. The initiators see opportunities for designers to broaden the scope of their work.

Creative Funding/voordekunst – Crowdkeeping
Creative Funding is taking the initiative to work with a number of small to medium-sized organizations in the creative sector to develop a common working method and support tool in the area of relationship management.

Touched by a hologram? – DoubleA
Composer and director Michel van der Aa (DoubleA), together with partners Arcturus, Scatter, VRDays Europe and a team of freelancers, is exploring the artistic possibilities of the virtual. The goal of the project is to prepare the performing arts sector for a metaverse future in which an infinite universe of interconnected virtual spaces exists.

Hybrid Models – Effenaar Smart Venue
Based on three experiments, Effenaar Smart Venue aims to develop new formats for hybrid events. The project partners see opportunities for a new revenue model and a rich ‘home experience’.

The New Social – Framer Framed
Framer Framed, together with IMPAKT and Hackers & Designers, among others, wants to formulate promising answers to the question of how cultural productions, such as livecasting and publications, can be meaningful in the longer term in a hybrid form of online and offline.

Future Materials – Jan van Eyck Academie
Jan van Eyck Academy is starting a collaboration with Central Saint Martins, among others, to scale up and further develop their hybrid database of sustainable and degradable artists’ materials. Ultimately, the project partners hope to contribute to making the practices of makers more sustainable.

Unlocking Fashion Heritage – Modemuze
By means of 3D scans of pieces from museum fashion collections, Modemuze, a collaboration of 18 Dutch and Flemish museums, aims to make craft-related, historical knowledge accessible to a broad audience: ranging from museum employees to ‘home makers’.

Boijmans Hillevliet – Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Together with partners from the cultural sector, the social field and education, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen is working on the further development of a new museum concept aimed at reaching the public.

De Kunst van Later – Muzus
Using an iterative approach, in which research and design go hand in hand, Muzus wants to offer self-employed people tools to arrange their retirement provision in a smart way. The research will be designed in co-creation with problem owners (Platform ACCT and PGB Pensioendiensten), partners from the cultural and creative industries (Motivaction, Think+DO, 3310 School for Millennials) and self-employed individuals.

OutsiderlandLab – Outsiderland (Stichting Captain Hoek)
By connecting makers from different backgrounds, Outsiderland aims to make the cultural and creative sector more accessible to any kind of creativity and originality. Affiliated with the project is a research study conducted by project partner Stefanie van Zal (Long-Term Care and Support Research Group).

Everybody in the (art)house! – Picl
How can cultural institutions utilize their digital or hybrid offerings to broaden their audience? Picl is looking for promising answers together with Rotterdam Festivals and Medialoc, among others.

Living Lab Open Cultuurdata – PublicSpaces
PublicSpaces, together with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, NPO and Waag, is starting a ‘living lab’ to learn how open-source technology can contribute to a greater reach and better findability of the online offerings of cultural productions.

2nd World – SMH 40-45
SMH 40-45, a collaboration of 15 Dutch museums and memorial centres focusing on the 1940-1945 period, aims to develop digital strategies that centre on value creation and audience reach by means of a development path for museum staff.

Podiumpas – Stichting Podiumpas
With the Podiumpas, the initiators want to lower the threshold for culture lovers to go to the theatre more often and to see more adventurous performances, with fuller theatres as the intended result.

Toolkit for the Inbetween – The Hmm
A collaboration between The Hmm, affect lab and MU is launching a dozen experiments relating to hybrid cultural experiences to promote interaction between physical and digital audiences.

Innovation:Lab Theater Utrecht – Theater Utrecht
In collaboration with DOX and HKU, Theater Utrecht is developing a laboratory in which makers can experiment with mixed-reality theatre techniques and storytelling methods.

Knowledge-sharing
In the coming months, the teams of the selected projects will work individually to implement their plans, but they will also operate as a group in sharing and making their knowledge and findings widely applicable. The Fund and CLICKNL are setting up an activities programme for this purpose. Topics examined here include identifying and analyzing the steps taken in a process, analyzing the obstacles, and adjusting working methods, objectives or strategy. Within this programme, the teams are assisted by two quartermasters: Renée van der Grinten, adviser in the film sector, and Gijs Meijer, adviser at DEN knowledge institute for culture & digital transformation. They help the teams to share the knowledge they have gained and make cross-connections.

Syb Groeneveld, executive director Creative Industries Fund NL: ‘Often individual projects have similar intentions, but lack correlation; that will be achieved with this programme. We bring partners together to devise solutions for the future together.

Bart Ashmann, director CLICKNL: ‘It is emphatically not only about the activities within the 16 projects, but also about the reflection on these activities. In order to give further substance to knowledge development for the entire sector, the Innovationlabs programme also provides an accompanying research project, financed by the Taskforce for Applied Research SIA.’

Innovationlabs
The Innovationlabs for the cultural and creative sector are an initiative of the former Minister van Engelshoven of Education, Culture and Science in response to the recommendation from the Council for Culture in its advisory report Onderweg naar Overmorgen to launch three innovation labs on the themes of digitization, spatial design and product differentiation. The programme is a joint project of the six national culture funds and CLICKNL. The aim is to give the cultural and creative sector the opportunity to experiment with applicable knowledge and working methods, in order to help it become more agile and resilient in the longer term after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Advisory committee
The committee, chaired by Nathanja van Dijk, with 10 advisers – Bas van Berkestijn, Anne Mieke Eggenkamp, Bert van Loon, Chequita Nahar, Luuk Nouwen, Marieke Schoenmakers, Jeroen Stout, Meis Suker, Jaïr Tchong and Martine Zoeteman – assessed the project proposals based on the degree of innovation, collaboration and scalability, among other aspects.

The available budget of € 3,150,000 is supporting 16 of the 47 positively assessed applications. The projects that achieved the highest score on all the criteria are part of the selection.