ICHEC Culture and Creative Hub (ICCH) fosters sustainable innovation and advances regenerative practices within the Cultural and Creative Sectors and Industries (CCSIs).
What
At its core, ICCH extends over a decade of ICHEC’s entrepreneurial expertise to the Cultural and Creative Sectors and Industries combining sustainable and inclusive management, heritage and culture economics, and cultural entrepreneurship.
For whom
It supports cultural entrepreneurs, emerging artists, and cultural institutions in transforming creative ideas/institutions into sustainable, resilient, and socially impactful ventures. Therefore, ICCH aims to empower theses cultural professionals to strengthen their management capacities, build cross-sector partnerships, and develop innovative economic models.
How
ICCH’s work spans training, research projects, and European collaborations that connect academia, CCIs enterprises and professionals, and policymakers.
Why ICCH
In Brussels, the Cultural and Creative Sectors and Industries (CCSIs) occupy a strategic place in the regional economy and collective identity. According to a study conducted by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, via Imec-SMIT, under the direction of Dr. Marlen Komorowski, and updated in 2023, the Brussels-Capital Region stands out as the region with the highest concentration of CCIs in Belgium. 13% businesses, 10% of employment, and 10% of self-employed individuals are in this sector. Together, they generate €3.7 billion in net added value and contribute 3.6% to the regional GDP.
These figures reflect a stark reality: the CCSIs are at the heart of Brussels' economic dynamism, its attractiveness, and its capacity for innovation. However, this strength is accompanied by very real vulnerabilities. Too many cultural actors operate in precarious conditions, marked by income instability, atypical employment statuses, and significant exposure to crises. Supporting the cultural and creative Sectors and Industries (CCSIs) is not just about funding projects. It's also about investing in the people who drive them.
Providing entrepreneurship training means giving cultural professionals the tools to structure their activities, secure their income, develop new business models, and expand internationally. It means transforming creativity into sustainable capacity. It means fostering a more resilient, more autonomous sector, fully integrated into contemporary economic challenges.
It is precisely to address these challenges that we created the Culture and Creativity Hub at ICHEC with a clear mission: to stimulate sustainable innovation and promote regenerative practices at the heart of the cultural and creative industries. It's not simply about supporting a sector, but about contributing to its profound transformation.
In concrete terms, the hub supports and equips cultural entrepreneurs, emerging artists, and institutions to transform their ideas into structured projects and their organizations into sustainable, resilient entities with a strong social impact.
At the heart of this approach, we have developed C-SHIP: an action-oriented training program in cultural entrepreneurship, designed by and for the realities of the sector. It is aimed at those already working in the cultural and creative industries, as well as those who wish to join them.
We target a broad and essential ecosystem: cultural institutions and museums, performing arts, visual arts, film and audiovisual production, and cultural heritage.
By bridging entrepreneurship, culture, and sustainability, the ICHEC Culture and Creative Hub builds a thriving ecosystem where creativity meets responsibility, and where cultural innovation drives lasting positive change.
By bridging entrepreneurship, culture, and sustainability, the ICHEC Culture and Creative Hub builds a thriving ecosystem where creativity meets responsibility, and where cultural innovation drives lasting positive change.
The current programs of ICCH
C-SHIP is a hands-on training enabling cultural actors to transform their projects into sustainable and viable businesses.
YONDERS is a Continuous Professional Development (CPD) course that empowers young people (15-24 years old) to turn their creative passions into sustainable entrepreneurial ventures in the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs).
MC-Credex is an experimental policy project for developing micro-credentials in the cultural and creative sectors, enhancing access to lifelong learning and skills recognition.
ICCH contributed to major European and research initiatives
CLIC - developing circular models to optimize investments in the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage.
ICCH Team
Furio is a project officer for YONDERS in charge of administration, coordination and communication. Recently graduated from ICHEC Brussels Management School, Furio has specialised in cultural entrepreneurship with a particular attention to non-profits. He is active Inside the audiovisual sector and the music industry as the manager of the non-profit SUSSOL where he focuses on supporting emerging artists and fostering cultural initiatives within the Brussels music scene.
Nathalie is an associate professor at the Chair in Arts Management at HEC Montréal, where she teaches communication, marketing, and arts and culture funding. She is a lecturer in the Graduate Diploma and master’s programs in Cultural Organization Management and in the prestigious master’s in international arts management. She also teaches in the master’s program in International Communication at Université de Sherbrooke, a dual-degree program offered in collaboration with UCL in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. In Europe, she shares her expertise as a cultural engineering expert and visiting professor at the IHECS Academy and ICHEC in Brussels. As a practitioner at ArtExpert and associated professor in the Chair of Arts Management at HEC-Montreal, she embodies the perfect blend of practice and teaching, offering an inspiring model for skill development and the promotion of entrepreneurship in the cultural sector.
Philippe is a senior expert in sustainable, agile and impactful business. He is catalyst of Agile & Participatory Positive Impact Teams, Organizations & Territories | B Leader. He aims to catalyse agility, participation and positive impacts at the level of teams, organizations and territories. To do so, his areas of intervention are focused on: sustainable and positive impact business models, collective intelligence and group dynamics, participatory and agile ways of working, design thinking & lean startup, breakthrough and continuous innovation and multi-stakeholders’ cooperative practices.
Philippe is key instructor in ICHEC’s continuing education program.
Karen holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design with a Minor in theatre from the American University of Beirut and a master’s in media and information design from LUCA School of Arts (Brussels). She has been a theatre practitioner since 2015 in Lebanon and subsequently in Belgium. Her artistic practice spans directing, dramaturgical assistance, collaborative storytelling, production coordination, and touring support, providing first-hand understanding of the creative, organisational and material conditions that structure live performance. She is co founder of Mirsat, an initiative supporting the production, circulation and visibility of performing artists from Arabic-speaking diasporic contexts in Europe.
Laurence is committed to the field of entrepreneurial education in Belgium and on the African continent. Director of Step2you since 2004, she leads this community service unit of ICHEC, dedicated to stimulating the entrepreneurial spirit among young people through innovative educational tools and teacher training. Coming from a family of teachers, Laurence has always been driven by the desire to contribute to education in connection with human development. A graduate of ICHEC in commercial and consular sciences. Her guiding principle: co-creation and connecting with others. She has designed and developed programs such as Cap’Ten, Cap’ado, and Dream+, which have reached tens of thousands of students in Belgium and abroad, and has participated in European and international projects in Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is passionate about creativity, art, ethics, sustainable development, and North-South cooperation.
Christian is a senior expert in heritage economics. Graduated from the UC Louvain (Ph.D. in Economics), Georgetown University (Master of Arts in Economics) and the University of Geneva (European Studies). He is President of the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (KU Leuven) and former Dean of ICHEC. His academic expertise covers business cycle theory, and cultural economics. He has been developing the field of cultural economics since the 1980s, under the initiative of late Professor Raymond Lemaire. His involvement in cultural economics covers such topics as economic values assessment, decision-making tools, innovative sustainable business models, cultural tourism, economics of conservation of tangible and intangible heritage, urban economics, historic urban landscape, sustainable tourism, non-profit management and arts management, public cultural and tourism policies.
Ruba isa senior lecturer and researcher at ICHEC Brussels Management School. She is an architect and urban planner by training. Her work is dedicated to the intersection of cultural heritage, economics, and cultural entrepreneurship. Her research and European projects investigate cultural entrepreneurship and circular practices in the cultural and creative industries. She is passionate about fostering participatory and co-design processes that bring new ideas to life and developing lifelong learning trainings for cultural and creative professionals. In addition to her role as head of department and lecturer she is an experienced mentor and educator. She manages C-SHIP (Cultural Entrepreneurship) professional training program at ICHEC, where she directly mentors a new generation of cultural entrepreneurs. She is currently leading the Working Group on entrepreneurial skills of the Creative Pact for Skills and represents ICHEC in a number of European projects.