Keynote Speakers
Friday, May 11
Tanja Muehlhans
She organizes conferences and matchmakings, implemented networks, started Berlin´s Creative Industries Initiative in 2005, established platforms and initiated cross innovation projects. She also develops strategies/ tools to foster the creative industries sector and supporting programs for creative enterprises.
Since 2006 she regularly works as speaker at international conferences and holds lectures about policy making for creative regions. She is chairman of the Creative Industries Initiative on the federal level in Germany, is key person of UNESCO´s Creative Industries Network for Berlin and participates in several advisory boards (film/ design/ creative industries) in germany and abroad.
Since 2011 she also works as freelance consultant specialised in supporting creative enterprises with business development as well as cities in restructuring their supporting portfolio.
Tanja Muehlhans is involved in the creative economy for more than 10 years, as business adviser, speaker and coordinator in ministries.
Friday, May 11
Patrick Cocquet
Patrick Cocquet is the CEO of Cap Digital cluster (www.capdigital.com/), a structure that gathers more than 650 innovative companies and more than 50 research and training organisations, working in digital contents and services fields.
After graduating from Centrale Lille School, he joined the Dassault Electronic Group. He led international standardization and development of products range actions for embedded networks and then for internet.
Then, he founded 6WIND, a company dedicated to software for internet network equipments.
Motivated by his entrepreneurial spirit, he started and organized Cap Digital in 2006, making it one of the first clusters in France and Europe.
Patrick Cocquet is a member of the European competitiveness and innovation strategic advisory committee.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Charles Landry
Charles Landry is an international authority on the use of imagination and creativity in urban change. His aim is to help cities become more resilient, self-sustaining and to future proof themselves. Charles helps cities identify and make the most of their resources and to reach their potential by triggering their inventiveness and open-minded thinking. Acting as a critical friend he works closely with decision makers and local leaders. He stimulates, facilitates and inspires so cities can transform for the better. He helps find apt and original solutions to seemingly intractable dilemmas, such as marrying innovation and tradition, balancing wealth creation and social cohesiveness, or local distinctiveness and a global orientation. He focuses on how the culture of a place can invigorate and revitalize the economy, enhancing its sense of self and confidence. His overall aim is to help cities get onto the global radar screen.
Charles undertakes tailored research and facilitates complex urban change and visioning processes. He takes on short and longer term involvements with cities. He develops his own projects, such as the creative city, the intercultural city and the on-going research on how public administrations can be accountable as well as flexible and entrepreneurial.
Charles has with his colleague Jonathan Hyams recently designed a Creative City Index which measures, evaluates and assesses the innovative pulse of a city and its capacity to adapt to radical global shifts and adjustments. This tool helps cities in their strategy making.
He was born in 1948 and studied in Britain, Germany and Italy. In 1978 he founded Comedia, a highly respected European consultancy working in creativity, culture and urban change. He has completed nearly 200 assignments for a variety of public and private clients and given key note addresses and workshops in nearly 50 countries across the continents including: Britain, Australia, Germany, Finland, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, China, Japan, Korea, India, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Albania, Croatia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, Ukraine, South Africa, Ecuador, Canada, the USA and Yemen.
He has written several books and published extensively, including: The Creative City: A toolkit for Urban Innovators (2000), published to widespread international acclaim; The Art of City Making (2006); The Intercultural City: Planning for Diversity Advantage with Phil Wood; and in 2012 The Origins and Futures of the Creative City and The Sensory Landscape of Cities.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Robert Sirman
Robert Sirman is the Director & CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts. After graduating from the University of Toronto with an MA in sociology, Sirman worked for over a decade in the Ontario Government, including five years in the province’s first Ministry of Culture.
He joined the Ontario Arts Council in 1980, where he served for 10 years as Director of Operations and Director of Research and Policy Planning.
In 1991, Mr. Sirman was appointed Administrative Director of Canada’s National Ballet School. Since his arrival at the Canada Council, the Council has enjoyed a 20% increase in its ongoing government appropriation, undertaken the most extensive strategic planning process in its history, reorganized internally following a year long organizational design review, and successfully completed its first special examination by the Office of the Auditor General.
Sirman currently serves on the board of the George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation in Toronto and is treasurer of the International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies (IFACCA) based in Sydney, Australia.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Edna dos Santos-Duisenberg
Edna dos Santos-Duisenberg is an economist who started her international career at the United Nations in Geneva in the 1980s having several positions including of Chief of Cabinet of the Secretary General of UNCTAD. In 2004 she set-up and became Chief, Creative Economy Programme of UNCTAD. In this capacity, she has been leading UNCTAD's policy-oriented research to assist governments in policy-making while at the same time implementing technical cooperation projects in developing countries on this innovative topic.
Ms. dos Santos is the director and main co-author of the UN Creative Economy Reports (2008 and 2010), and launched the UNCTAD's Global data bank on world trade of creative industries. She has been promoting international and national action in the area of the creative economy, in particular sensitizing governments, business, academics and practitioners about the economic potential of the creative industries not only to generate jobs, revenues, trade and innovation but also for its contribution to social inclusion and cultural diversity.
Her academic background is in economics and business administration from the University of Economic Sciences and Finance of Rio de Janeiro. She obtained two Master Degrees; in International Trade from the Sorbonne University in Paris, and in International Economic Relations from the International Institute of Public Administration of Paris. She gave lectures and has several published articles.