CREATIS LAUNCHED IN BELGIUM WITH ING AND KISSKISSBANKBANK

CREATIS is being launched in Belgium with ING and KissKissBankBank to create the first Belgian business incubator dedicated to the cultural and creative industries.

CREATIS, a workspace for cultural entrepreneurs, is dedicated to entrepreneurship and innovation in the cultural fields: media, television, animation, music, architecture, web culture, advertising, fashion, visual arts, photography, culinary arts, crafts, design, press, radio, heritage, performing arts, public art, etc.

Supported by ING Belgium, the platform is designed to foster and accelerate the development of businesses in the cultural and creative sector, and also provide these businesses with access to a virtuous ecosystem and personalised expert support.

The incubator will be housed at the ING Art Center, located on Place Royale, already home to the exhibitions organised by ING Belgium, and will thus become a place of permanent dialogue with the city and society within the Mont des Arts, right in the centre of Brussels. 

For one year, as many as 10 businesses from the creative and cultural sector can be accommodated, and future expansion is planned for. Emphasis is placed on companies developing innovative digital-related activities, working on projects that can be rolled out on the European and international markets, and whose creators are driven by a desire to end the silo approach to sectors and working methods. Entrepreneurs will be supported in these new markets thanks to the international presence of CREATIS, particularly in France where the structure is already successfully supporting more than 40 businesses.

Rik Vandenberghe, CEO of ING Belgium: "Through this support to the CREATIS incubator, ING Belgium reaffirms its total commitment to innovation, less than a year after the launch of the ING FinTech Village. This support is a natural extension of the bank’s strategic vision, since it reflects our goal of giving entrepreneurs a head start. By inviting creative teams to set up in the ING Art Center, it also confirms our commitment to support the up-and-coming creative industries in Belgium. We are excited to be adding this new dimension to our already successful partnership with KissKissBankBank." 

ING AND KISSKISSBANKBANK HAVE BEEN PARTNERS FOR A WHOLE YEAR…

One year ago, ING Belgium concluded a partnership with KissKissBankBank to add crowdfunding to the financing solutions it offers entrepreneurs. For enthusiastic entrepreneurs with innovative ideas, a traditional bank loan is not always the best or the only solution. This is why ING Belgium has teamed up with KissKissBankBank to offer (partial) financing through crowdfunding to these professionals. Both the entrepreneur and the bank stand to gain from a diversified financing offer.

Vincent Ricordeau, Co-founder and CEO of KissKissBankBank, declared a year ago: "We are very pleased to announce our first major partnership in Belgium and Luxembourg. The partnership between ING and KissKissBankBank is an important step in the development of crowdfunding in that it demonstrates its complementarity with traditional financing methods.”

This development has effectively taken place over the past year, as the partnership between the two structures has already made it possible to finance several projects on the platform. It has mostly involved companies in the areas of the social and circular economy and the cultural and creative industries. The latter is very much a boom sector. It represents 4.2% of European GDP and is the third largest employer after the construction and hotel and catering industry. In Belgium, nearly 10% of self-employed people and almost 5% of total GDP depend on these professions.

…A PARTNERSHIP THAT TAKES ON A NEW DIMENSION WITH CREATIS

This collaboration also shows that the arts and culture sector, despite its huge public and commercial potential, needs a special support system to allow it to come into its own. ING Belgium backs creative entrepreneurs in different ways: it provides advice, brings entrepreneurs together, helps them build on their ideas, etc. 
It is therefore the ideal partner for these creative and innovative professionals.

The mission of CREATIS is to accelerate the development of the businesses it hosts for a one-year period – a guarantee of customised support. The entrepreneurs also have the opportunity to access a network of experts who can provide them with specific training at attractive rates in, for example, putting together, drafting and presenting business plans; developing presentations, communications and arguments; elementary law (business, employment, intellectual property, internet); online presence strategies, etc.

Edouard Meier, Director of CREATIS Belgium: “Being hosted by CREATIS means being part of an ecosystem that goes beyond the shared workspace. An entrepreneurial project accepted into the heart of a cultural institution thrives on meetings, exchanges and encounters with the various stakeholders. Broadening perspectives means boosting economic and cultural creativity, participating in a proactive project that sets out to structure a cultural economy resting on several pillars: strong partnerships, not only within the cultural sector, in order to move away from a silo mentality, participation in discussions on the sector to drive forward projects, ideas and work, interaction with sectors of the public.”

...AND NEW SYNERGIES WITH THE ING ART CENTER

The businesses that will take part in the acceleration programme will be coached by ING Belgium and will be strengthened not only thanks to the expertise related to its innovation in banking, buoyed in particular by its experience with the ING FinTech Village, but also through its artistic expertise, symbolised by the ING Art Center.

…THE CALL FOR PROJECTS IS HAPPENING NOW

Start-ups interested in the CREATIS initiative in Brussels and which have an innovative project can now download and complete the call for applications from the website www.residencecreatis.fr.
The applications will be reviewed by the teams from CREATIS, ING Belgium and KissKissBankBank. The businesses selected will have access to the incubator from 1 February 2017.

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To find out more:

Creatis Belgium, Eduard Meier, Director: edouard.meier@kisskissbankbank.com

ING Belgium Press Office: + 32 2 547 24 84 or pressoffice@ing.be
Follow us at www.ing.be/about or on Twitter: @INGBelgieNews and @INGBelgiqueNews

KissKissBankBank press office: charlotte.richard@kisskissbankbank.com

Visual material: Pictures Creatis-ING

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About us: 
ING Belgium SA provides its customers with a wide range of financial products and services via the distribution channels of their choice. ING Belgium SA has 8,132 FTEs (July 2016) and is part of ING Bank NV, which serves 33 million private customers, professionals and institutions in over 40 countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Australia.

KissKissBankBank is Europe's leading crowdfunding platform dedicated to international, innovative creative projects. Its mission is to promote international independent projects by allowing thousands of creators to collect funds from the public while maintaining 100% of the intellectual property of their projects. KissKissBankBank is an optimism generator: "It’s time to free creativity!". April 2013 marked the launch of a second platform by KissKissBankBank Technologies: hellomerci is the world’s first crowdfunding platform dedicated to solidarity loans, zero-interest direct lending for personal and professional projects: "Borrow from people who want you to succeed". In September 2014, KissKissBankBank Technologies launched LENDOPOLIS, the crowdlending platform dedicated to French small and medium-sized enterprises in partnership with Les Echos group and the Conseil supérieur de l’Ordre des experts-comptables. By providing users with options to back all kinds of project, KissKissBankBank Technologies will become the only company in the world to provide an offer in every segment of the crowdfunding ecosystem. KissKissBankBank was founded in September 2009 by Ombline le Lasseur, Vincent Ricordeau and Adrien Aumont.

CREATIS is a platform created in 2012 dedicated to entrepreneurship and innovation in the fields of culture and the creative industries: media, television, animation, music, architecture, web culture, advertising, video games, fashion, visual arts, photography, culinary arts, crafts, design, press, radio, heritage, performing arts, public art, etc. Backed by the city of Paris, the Ile-de-France region and BPI France, the platform is designed to support and accelerate the development of companies in the cultural sector, combining excellence and creation of meaning, by offering not only a flexible and scalable hosting solution, but also entry to a virtuous ecosystem, the support of relevant experts and easier access to funding. In total, more than 40 companies from the sector can be hosted on 115 workstations in incubator or co-working mode.