Sometimes we have to go back to a great research we have done in the past with joined efforts and in a collaborative manner. This helps us to see how we change, advance and improve. It also assists us to look at the past achievements with a fresh new glance.

The ERICarts Institute carried out a six month study for the European Commission between April and October 2008 on mobility incentives in the culture/creative sector. This was not intended to be an audit of all mobility related schemes in Europe, but rather a survey and analysis of the range and scope as well as motives and results of such programs. During the course of the study, the ERICarts Institute collected information on:

•  mobility trends in different regions of Europe;
• recent debates taking place within individual countries;
• existing mobility schemes (their objectives, kind of support, target beneficiaries, eligibility conditions and the nature of benefits);
• the main motives for funding bodies to support mobility; and
• the main sources where professionals can find information about mobility incentives or barriers.

The team developed a classification of the main types and objectives of mobility schemes and tried to assess, on the basis of a rather limited supply of comparable data, their impact/effectiveness.
Recommendations for action are targeted to mobility funders within Member States and call for complementary action on the part of the European Commission, which respects the principle of subsidiarity for EU action in the cultural sector.

Experts identified interesting cases from the diverse world of mobility funding. These cases go beyond the ‘norm’ of cultural diplomacy and can be characterized as those which, for example:

• provide artists and cultural professionals with an opportunity or platform to build partnerships with other individual professionals and/or institutions;
• open up new markets or opportunities for their works to be recognized and distributed;
• provide stepping stones for further career development;
• address contemporary cultural policy issues of e.g. cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue or the cultural industries;
• address the inequities or imbalances which persist in the mobility flows across Europe;
• promote transparency in the application and selection process.

Such cases were found within government cooperation strategies (international, trans-regional, national or local), within individual or targeted mobility programmes of arms-length or semi-public bodies, cultural institutions, foundations or other private sector actors from all parts of Europe.