SECRETARY GENERAL’S REPORT, MAY 2021

Creative Europe is the European Commission's framework support programme designed to help the cultural and creative sectors avail of the opportunities of the digital age and globalisation; to enable sectors to reach their economic potential, contributing to sustainable growth, jobs and social cohesion; and to give Europe's culture and media sectors access to new international opportunities, markets and audiences. ACE is in the last year of its 4-year “CONNECT-ARCH” programme which aims to assist the sector towards recovery and help architects to respond to current challenges: intra-EU mobility, increased extra- EU competition and up-skilling to adapt to digital and other new technologies. To reinforce the sector’s capacity, ACE is pursuing the following global objectives:

Organisational Development – strengthen our network and increase collaboration among Member Organisations (MOs)
• Build organisational capacity through knowledge-sharing and peer-to-peer learning activities; • Enhance Members’ engagement through workshops / conferences;
• Develop mutually beneficial schemes;
• Build capacity and leverage MOs’ positions at national / EU level through collective actions; provide opportunities for ACE MOs to participate in EU policy/law-making. Improving the transnational mobility of European architects – help them to access new markets
• Identify opportunities and partnerships in the EU and beyond;
• Negotiate Mutual Recognition Agreements with architects outside the EU. Professional Capacity Building – help EU architects to develop their professional / business skills
• Help EU architects to advance their positions as leaders in the face of global challenges;
• Support firms to maintain skills / acquire new ones, to remain globally competitive;
• Improve the entrepreneurial skills of architects and their ability to flourish in new markets.

2020 was a challenging year as events and activities involving public gatherings (conferences, touring exhibition) could not be pursued. However, we were still able to publish a checklist for International collaboration between architects (joint ventures) and architectclient relations, re-issue the 20 Architectural Projects against Climate Change booklet and conduct the 7th edition of the Sector Study. We launched the ACE Observatory containing past editions of the Sector Study and a search engine to allow these to be interrogated and data compared or extracted.

NEW CREATIVE EUROPE PROGRAMME 2021 - 2027
DG EAC is looking to achieve a closer alignment between policy (new European Agenda for Culture, Council Work Plan for Culture) and the Creative Europe programme. The New Agenda for Culture has three main objectives: Social (the power of culture for social cohesion and well-being); Economic (culture-based creativity, education, innovation and its impact on Jobs & Growth); External – international cultural relations. The Creative Europe programme for 2021 – 2027 is likely to focus on competitiveness; cultural diversity; fragmentation of markets; concentration of the market and increased competition; digitalisation; and access to funding. ACE recommended that the next programme support actions to achieve the ambitions set out in the Davos Declaration and to promote high quality architecture and Baukultur in Europe. It is expected that DG EAC will continue to support networks (such as ACE) with similar aims (upskilling in response to digitalisation; sustainability; and promoting mobility and internationalisation of careers) and following successful sectorial approaches in other sectors, DG EAC envisages a number of structured dialogues with other sectors – including architecture.