Pro-CCS: Microfunding for Cultural and Creative Sectors (co-funded by Erasmus+), after two years, has come to a close.
Over the past two years, this project has focused on how to address the challenges CCSs face in accessing finance, which is one of the most critical obstacles to the sector’s growth. The Pro-CCS project supports overall CCSs by reinforcing the competences of professionals active in the sectors and aims at bridging the cultural and creative sectors with the financial sector in order to facilitate access to credit.
Pro-CCS asserts that the Cultural and Creative Sector (CCS) is amongst the fastest-growing sectors of the economy. Nevertheless, the challenges in accessing finance are one of the most critical obstacles to its growth. In some cases, access to finance is circumvented by specific characteristics of CCS actors, such as lack of tangible assets, high uncertainty of market demand, generation of value over long and uncertain periods of time, and general lack of knowledge of funding opportunities. For many budding entrepreneurs in CCS, there can be obstacles pertaining to a lack of business skills or a general fear of losing control of their business and/or control over their artistic practice. Specific market conditions can also play a role in stifling access, such as a lack of good market knowledge and pressure on existing business models due to changing factors in the environment, such as the digital shift, for example.
In 2016 the European Commission launched the Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Facility (CCS GF) as a response to many of these challenges, easing access to finance for micro-businesses and small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) in CCS while increasing engagement with financial intermediaries. In addition to the fact that the cultural sector is largely composed of micro-enterprises, non-profit organizations and creative professionals who often lack access to financial support, the current crisis caused by COVID-19 compounded issues for the sector, due to the sudden and massive loss of revenue opportunities. The suspension of activities and the cancellation (or postponement) of events, shows and festivals generated a chain of negative effects, whose effects can still be felt today, even after the sector started resuming activities. For all these reasons, the Pro-CCS project has focused on bridging the skills gap of professionals in the sector and facilitating access to credit by creating dedicated channels and providing solid information on the economic potential of the CCS to financial intermediaries so that they can overcome a traditional distrust of the sector and support its growth.
Across the five partners, Ente Nazionale per il Microcredito (Italy), InnoGrowth (Bulgaria), ImpactHub Leipzig (Germany), Culture Action Europe (Belgium) and Euradia (Italy), Pro-CCS has focused on four key objectives: 1) creating a European community of mentors who are specialized in providing complete training and tutoring to professionals active in the Cultural and Creative Sector, 2) supporting the development of managerial and entrepreneurial skills of CCS professionals, 3) supporting the development of micro business ideas in the CCS by easing the access to credit and funding opportunities and lastly, 4) supporting financial intermediaries in better understanding of specificity and peculiarity of the CCS and to reinforce their awareness on the economic potential of the sector itself.
As the project now comes to a close, Pro-CCS leaves behind a set of open-source materials to continue developing new collaborations between the world of micro-credit and the cultural and creative sector:
- a training course for business development services and financial tutors
- a distance training course for cultural and creative sector professionals
- a toolkit for financial intermediators to support business start-ups in CCS
These resources, which have been created through consultation with the business development sector, the cultural and creative sector, as well as financial intermediators, are now available online and after the official close of the project. More information about the project can be found at pro-css.com. For any organisation or individual interested in staying connected to topics of microfinance in the cultural sector, either through new grant-funded opportunities or informal connections to projects, conferences, and tools that focus on entrepreneurship and funding cultural and creative enterprises, please contact maya@cultureactioneurope.org.
