Nordic-Baltic summit on creative industries"That was actually the first time we talked about everything at the same time - at the political level, about funding, about awareness and about the incubation programme for creative business operators," said Ragnar Siil, the director of the Development Department of the Ministry of Culture, of a meeting held in Riga at the end of January.

Representatives of the Baltic States and the Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM) came together at the invitation of Latvian Minister of Culture Sarmite Elerte to discuss the promotion of the creative economy and to weigh up ways of working more closely and successfully together. There is a need in the creative economies of the Nordic countries and the Baltic States to find more and more new forms of cooperation with the aim of boosting the region's breakthrough potential around the world, explained Imants Gross, director of the Latvian office of the NCM.

Estonia is one step ahead of the other Baltic States in terms of the development of the creative economy. Minister Elerte said that she is now determined to focus on fostering the development of the creative economy in Latvia. One of the country's early success stories is the creative incubator Andrejsalas, which has only been operating for a couple of months, and into which were admitted 50 companies out of 2000 applicants. They do not have a pre-incubation programme; instead, to support companies, they cover 85% of the costs of outsourced services during the first year and 80% in the second year. They also encourage the companies to purchase services from others within the incubator.


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