It’s the 24th of May and we are entering the Matadero Madrid. A huge creative space in the city centre. Formerly known as slaughterhouse, but nowadays the place to be for events, concerts and creative gatherings like Zinc Shower.
Zinc Shower? Yes, Spain’s biggest event for the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI). Worldwide more than 8.000 entries applied to become a Zinc Shower; the possibility to let visitors, possible clients, investors and policy makers get to know your product or service. Only 100 fresh start-ups were selected to present their ideas by pitching or filling in a spot on the Zinc Market. More about these start ups later on this week on the blog!
Besides the Zinc Showers, you could indulge yourself in Zinc Talks. As the name suggests; inspiring talks about the CCI, investor experiences or how to get access to funds. ECBN decided to go with Juliane Schulz from Peacefulfish‘ alk about best practices in European funding. With great examples of how UK funding boosted the film industry, how the Dutch have organizations like Cultuur and Ondernemen and the inspiring Triodos bank who is especially there for the culture and arts field. If you would like to dive into more of these best practices, get more info here. With lots of research and impressive statistics that go along with them, she made clear that the creative industry is actually a bigger industry than the automotive with an impressive 4,5% of the total EU GDP. So doing business in the CCI is not a ‘lifestyle’ or ‘hobby’ like the critics used to say, but a serious field to be aware of.
After a stroll around the 3D printing market, we rolled into Jamie Coleman from Scottish creative hub Codebase talk. With an opening slide with the huge title ‘NO ONE WANTS A JOB’ he had the public eating out of his hand. And the Scottish accent helped as well. Besides an inspiring talk about his thoughts and drive behind his successful creative hub (focussed on digital start ups), he made us think about what we want. What consumers want and how this affects your product, your intellectual property and basically your whole outlook on doing business, your start-up and funding. Refreshing.
With more than 5.000 visitors in 2013, this three-day edition also attracted loads of people to Madrid. The large square in the middle of the Matadero venue hosts a bus where bands are playing and performances are given. The whole event breathes a festival vibe where ideas are shared, investments are done and business is part of the deal. We visited Zinc Shower on Saturday, but we are sure we want to indulge the whole 3 days next year, We can’t wait!
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