Toespraak van minister Bussemaker tijdens de afsluiting van de Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM)

Toespraak | 21-10-2014

I have been truly inspired by this Asian-European meeting and our search to find the best ways to encourage the creative industries of our respective countries. I hope you have as well.

We have travelled to Eindhoven and we are about to go to Amsterdam to meet the best designers and visit the finest museums in the Netherlands – and to give the leading creative professionals from our various countries the opportunity to connect and do business together. It was good to hear this morning how fruitful these sessions have been so far.
Here in Rotterdam, we have shared our best practices (and our struggles as well) during the workshops and the plenary sessions.

And now, as becomes a good host, I want to take you back home, not literally of course, but by sharing some of the conclusions from this 6th ASEM meeting and some thoughts about the next one. Everything I have heard and seen over the past two and a half days, from lectures to dialogues with colleagues, and from workshops to informal conversations, has led me to the following ‘take-home message’:

1.    As different as all our countries are, we share common ground. Both Europe and Asia have very ancient and very rich cultures: from Borobudur to the windmills of Kinderdijk, from Pakistani and Indian classical music to the paintings of Rembrandt. We need to protect and preserve this heritage, and that in itself is a difficult task.
We have to find new techniques to protect these treasures from flooding and acidification. And we need to strike the right balance between sharing art with the public and taking good care of it, so that we can hand it down to the generations to come.
In other words, we need the creative industries to protect our classical art and culture.

2.    We also share a responsibility to connect long-established cultural and creative industries such as the visual arts, crafts, architecture and conservation with their more recent counterparts: film, gaming and technology driven design to name but a few.
I am reminded of Daan Roosegaarde’s inspiring lecture about his work. He was asked to take an old Renaissance church that had fallen into neglect and bring it back to life again. He did so by installing his own artwork, ‘The Lotus Dome’, made of dozens of metallic flowers that react to the presence of curious visitors.

This project could almost be a symbol of how to encourage museums to present their collections in a way that is interesting to us, the people of the twenty-first century, using new media and by telling the stories behind works of art in many different ways.

It might also serve as a symbol of how we teach the arts and culture in our schools, or at least the approach we take here in the Netherlands. While perception and reflection are important, our art education programmes also encourage pupils to produce their own artworks and to explore art through play. And in this new media age we are always on the lookout for new ways to make the traditional arts interesting for our children. In other words, we need creative industries to connect the new and the old worlds within the field of culture.

3.    The final step is that we need to stimulate our cultural and creative industries to add value to society.
We have to take them beyond the boundaries of the cultural world and help them to connect with other areas of society, such as healthcare, infrastructure and environmental sustainability. This goal is rooted in our growing awareness of how fruitful these crossovers can be, both today and in the future.

What struck me in Daan Roosegaarde’s lecture was his emphasis on ‘questioning’.
His Smart Highway project started with a simple question: ‘Why do we always focus on the car but never on the highway itself?’
As brilliant as Daan is, he is not the only creative artist who questions what we consider to be ‘normal’, the things we take for granted.
Take the Design Academy student who asked himself ‘Why do we always throw away our cell phones when only a single part is broken?’ He designed Phonebloks to solve this problem: a mobile phone you can construct using Lego-style blocks, enabling you to replace the parts whenever you want to.   
Another student at the Academy asked ‘Why do we boil too much water for only one cup of tea?’ and went on to design a kettle for a single cup.
When I saw this during our trip to Eindhoven, I asked myself ‘Why didn’t anybody think of this before? It’s so simple!’

Einstein once said ‘Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.’
And that’s exactly the added value that our artists and creative professionals have to offer. They find new solutions because they refuse to stay within the boundaries of what we call ‘normal’. Instead, their natural impulse is to cross them.

We now live in a time when we are leaving the old world and facing a new one. And, as King Willem-Alexander said so beautifully: ‘Creativity is the steam engine of our time’.
So we need these ‘competent rebels’, as I like to call them, these creative spirits and creative entrepreneurs who are constantly asking why, to enable us to deal with this new world. They are the ones who will figure out how to use new technology in a way that benefits everyone. And they will help us to discover newer, smarter solutions to the urgent problems we are facing in areas such as sustainability, ageing and safety. But they cannot do it alone. They need support from governments – from us – providing an effective balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches.

To summarize, our common challenge is (1) to preserve the cultures of our countries, (2) to open them up to all generations, stimulate crossovers within the cultural realm and help them flourish using new technologies and approaches and (3) to take full advantage of the added value of creativity, in all kinds of social and economic ways.

Over the past two and a half days, we have been discussing how best to meet these challenges and our discussions have led us to some interesting conclusions.

For example, with regard to creative skills, we have decided that in all our countries, the education and culture sectors should commit themselves to a more dedicated and collaborative approach that puts training in creative skills at the very heart of our educational programmes.

Regarding creative cities, we have realized that we needed to encourage crossovers between creative people and entrepreneurs, between artists and citizens. And that working from the bottom up is better than working from the top down.

And concerning cultural entrepreneurship, we agree that while the creative industries need protection and special treatment because they operate on a small scale, we also need to encourage them to develop entrepreneurial skills and leadership.

These are my conclusions and my thoughts. And in addition, you have all received a copy of our chair statement. Please tell me, do you all agree that these are the right conclusions?

Although we’re almost at the end of the conference, in my opinion we’re not finished yet. For me, the past two days represent only the start of a valuable dialogue about the creative and cultural industries in our countries.
I would like to suggest that Korea, host of the seventh ASEM Conference, should adopt the same theme as we did at the present meeting. After all, the theme of cultural heritage and cultural diversity also spanned two conferences. I would also like to suggest that at the next conference we continue the tradition of bringing creative professionals into our midst.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

It has been a pleasure and a privilege to meet you all, to accompany you on inspiring excursions and to gain an insight into each country’s views in a series of interesting presentations. I would like to leave you with this thought: as global as our world is nowadays, culture – as we all agree – still gives us a way to express our own distinct and unique identities.

Before I go, allow me to thank you for the cups you sent us – all of them different, all interesting and all very beautiful. And let me also thank you for all your different, interesting and beautiful ideas – they have been a genuine inspiration.

Have a safe trip home.