Spillover effects in Europe – a new research front

Arts and cultural organisations all across Europe are continually faced with demands to justify their receipt of public funding, and increasingly under pressure to align their interests with funders or government sponsors. A new research project on ‘creative and cultural spillover’ attempts to devise a new language and perhaps a new sense of mission for cultural agents. Based on a survey of existing research, it observes how culture and the arts have always played a significant social and economic function. However, it further asserts that reference to a EU scale policy framework should motivate cultural sectors (perhaps in alliance with the creative industries) to actively generate ‘spillover’ within broader innovation and sustainability frameworks. This short article presents the project’s rationale and central concerns, and underlines its significance to the cultural policy research community, (but does not preempt the imminent publication of a Final Report)