ekip is an Innovation Policy Platform for the Cultural and Creative Industries, so in our communication we tend to include “policy” a lot, often in combination with other words. This sometimes leads to confusion, since the concept is rather complex and sometimes used in different ways. Here we try to define some of the more common concepts: policy, policy recommendation, policy area, and policy journey.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines “policy” as
“a set of ideas or a plan of what to do in particular situations that has been agreed to officially by a group of people, a business organization, a government, or a political party.”
In the context of ekip, a policy can focus on issues such as what kinds of organizations are allowed to apply for funding (for example, both SMEs and NGOs) or on selection criteria for invitation to participate in programs or activities (for example, >10 employees). They can also regulate tasks allocated to cultural institutions, for example, if museums are encouraged to support innovation or not. A policy can also define how money is distributed for different kinds of activities and if support is made available. In sum, a policy can focus on many things, but the key is that it is something that (a) a group of people decides upon (b) within some kind of organisation, for example, a municipality. There are also different policy domains, such as cultural policies and innovation policies where ekip aims at bridging the two.
By Lena Holmberg
Read more about policy concepts at ekip website
