Support to Clusters in cultural industries

Within its jurisdiction different government bodies gave a support to encouraging of cultural industries and thereby strengthening the diversity of cultural expressions, through financial or other support to establishment of clusters. Ministry of Economy supported the establishment/development of 5 clusters in cultural industries: "Film Cluster" (76 members), "Creative Industry Cluster of Vojvodina" (40 members), "RE: CRAFTS & Innovation cluster" (27 members), "Art Crafts Cluster" from Sombor (15 members) and "Cluster of Design and Printing" from Nis. The structure of cluster shows that small clusters with up to 25 members are mainly dominating. They belong to the entrepreneurial type of clusters, i.e. they are founded in order to improve cooperation between micro-companies and entrepreneurs, and to provide access to information and enable cooperation by putting together the demand and supply sides.

The most interesting example of networking initiatives in the area of cultural industries from public, private and civil society is the "Creative Industry Cluster of Vojvodina" established in 2010. The cluster has 40 members, most of them are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and independent artists and experts. There are also members from public and educational institutions. Recently there is an increased interest of NGOs for inclusion into clusters. The largest number of SMEs is from marketing and consulting sectors (27%), then from design (20%), film, video and audio production (17%), music and stage production (13%), television and radio (10%), fashion design (7%), and one company from the field of publishing industry and one from architecture, which makes up to 3% of the total number of SMEs in the cluster. One of the priority of this cluster is to organize events and initiate activities that will lead to faster acceptance of changes in the public sector of culture. The Cluster's objective was to increase number of members and to network them. Besides, the Cluster participated in the project of the European Commission for strengthening cluster organizations which resulted in the increased interests and involvement of new members into the cluster, such as the Novi Sad Fair, the "Exit festival", the Institute for Culture of Vojvodina, the Vojvodina Slovak Cultural Institute and many others. They all will contribute to the expansion of creative industries in Serbia. The Cluster organized CRINSS conference (Creative Industries Summer Sessions), where over 25 participants from ten countries of the region and the EU exchanged examples of good practices in establishing business and innovations. Along with the Ministry of Economy, the Secretariat for Economy of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina financially supported work of the Cluster.

Challenges identified in the implementation of this measure: It is difficult to establish coherent clusters because of the fact that cultural industries entail heterogeneous activities. On the other hand, value chains in different fields are unequal developed (e.g. music industry has a poorly developed value chain, while film industry has mostly developed value chain). It is difficult to network different actors and establish their formal cooperation in all areas, as well as develop a cooperation on a long term basis.