A five-day forum held during the Nuits sonores festival, the European Lab platform aims to connect cultural, political, economic and media professionals who are developing innovative projects or philosophies that operate independently from dominant institutional and commercial models, and who are working to rethink entrepreneurial models and cultural policies in Europe.

Created in 2011 with the support of the European Union (through Programme 1.3.6, support for European festivals), European Lab is not intended to be a network in itself. Rather, it aims to function both as a European think tank and as a hub capable of hosting and bringing together other initiatives, particularly networks.

A wide range of panels, conferences and workshops will explore the notion of innovation in the cultural field through four interconnected perspectives: creativity, politics, media and economics. These four cardinal points of the European Lab platform are interconnected, and the relationships between them are undergoing profound change.

At the heart of this “cardinal” framework lies innovation and the ability to simultaneously reinvent our cultural policies and our understanding of cultural entrepreneurship. This is a crucial issue for Europe, and even more so for its major cities, which seek to define themselves as territories of creativity and innovation.

It is against this backdrop of accelerated change that the European Lab platform is preparing its third edition, with the aim of bringing together a deeply European generation, aware of the challenges and impact of cultural globalisation and the digital revolution. A generation convinced that culture is the primary driving force behind strengthening European citizenship, and eager to develop new models to address the cultural challenges of the early 21st century: cross-sector collaboration, new uses and practices, reducing social and territorial divides, and above all, inequalities between citizens in access to available cultural resources.

Vincent Carry