CAST

The main objective CAST is to support the creation, business development and scaling-up of companies in the tourism sector through incubators and accelerators integrating creativity, art and design skills from the Cultural and Creative Industries with cutting-edge technology, science and other relevant expertise.

CAST brings together a consortium of organisations with enormous experience in working with creative industries across Europe and stimulating their creation growth and internationalisation – as well as in the tourism sector. All the partners have worked extensively and intensively with creative enterprises, stimulating innovation and cross sector working. They have also all worked together in different combinations for several years.

The CAST consortium consists of partners from Ireland, Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Germany and Denmark, providing a balanced geographical coverage. Partners operating transnationally are based in Belgium, Denmark and the UK. It will link through EBN with the European Creative Hubs Network (ECHN), established in 2016 to support the subsistence and growth of creative hubs in Europe from a variety of sectors, business models and stages and as innovative models of change to kick start the creative economy in Europe.

Together they form a trans-national network of business incubators and accelerators with a focus on SMEs and start-ups in CCIs sector (including creative technologies) with a tourism focus. Partners will work in a manner to accelerate enterprise development in the specialist areas of finance, creativity and innovation. The project will help address some of the mainstream challenges such as the utilisation of technology to combat seasonality issues and strategies to attract tourists to remote and rural locations, in addition to typical destinations and utilisation of novel concepts and business models, such as virtual tourism and experience based tourism concepts.