The Fame Financing Network at the Kick-off Meeting in Rome, Italy
A beautiful Roman spring day welcomed well over 170 participants to the Cross-Media Summit organized by Filas and the ImMediaTe Consortium. The Casa del Cinema provided the perfect setting for the entrepreneurs, investors, media experts and representatives of the Lazio Region and the European Commission meeting to analyse the state of the art of digital media and financing for the creative industries.
The Fame Financing Network invites all high-growth Creative Industry companies to the Fame Screening and Financing Forums.
The Fame Financing Network (FFN) is a newly established cross-border European partnership bringing together four partners with extensive expertise and experience in financing promising companies in the Creative Industries (CI) sector.
The FameFinancing Screening and Financing Process™ will be open to select, high-growth-ready SMEs operating in the Creative Industries. This investment-readiness elevator includes an initial screening stage for all eligible applicants; followed by ad hoc coaching, mock pitches, evaluation and direct presentation to interested investors. The Network will hold 3 major forums in Denmark, Germany and Italy (time and exact location tba) at which scalable and high-growth CI companies will be selected to participate in the investment-readiness elevator and financing leverage workshops.
The main objective of the FFN is to mobilize new financing sources and develop a dedicated Pan-EU Fund for CI companies. In order to advance towards this ambitious goal, the FFN will analyse the current provision of finance currently available to CIs, increase the investment-readiness of innovating CI businesses.
FFN Coordinator Michela Michilli (FILAS) underlined how the network “will allow the cross-cultural inter-exchange of knowledge, competencies and partnerships to create the legal framework for a pan-European fund for the Creative Industries. The digital revolution continues to change many sectors very rapidly, so we must identify new companies that need an international business model and financial support to fully blossom.”
Indeed, the Creative Industries is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors in the European Economy and as Rasmus Wiinstedt Tscherning (Ceo CKO) pointed out “they are fairing far better than banks, airlines, pharmaceutical companies and other sectors in the current financial crisis.”
Klaus Haasis (Baden Württemberg Connected) remarked “the next big step in innovation and competitiveness is to bring the CIs and traditional industries closer together. The convergence of different CI areas is evident, for example, in the gamification of the training, simulation and education sectors.”
Kim Ove Olsen similarly emphasised the increasing development of a core CI area, which “catalysed by the digital revolution, will lead to a more integrated approach in investments as is presently taking place in the newspaper, television and publishing sectors.”
FFN partners are FILAS - Financial Development Agency of the Lazio Region (Italy), BWCON – Baden Württemberg Connected (Germany), CAT SCIENCE PARK (Denmark) and CKO – Centre for Culture and Experience Economy Denmark.
The Fame Financial Network is the operational arm of Project FAME, a European Project that is co-financed by the CIP Programme under the new European Creative Industry Alliance and aims to facilitate a wide-scale and sustainable impact on the level of finance available to support the development and competitiveness of European high-growth Creative Industries businesses.
