Internationalisation is at the heart of our mission as a network – between us we have enough airmiles to get to the moon. Our new publication, ACCESS: A Manifesto for Growth in Europe’s Cultural and Creative Industries, sets out what we’ve learnt from helping creative businesses to grow internationally.

This manifesto has been developed as a collaborative document. We presented a working draft at the ECBN Policy Forum in February 2014 and have refined it since, in close consultation with our members. So we hope it provides a fair reflection of what, as a network, we have learnt.

ACCESS sets out five principles for effective support to internationalisation:

1. It is led by individual businesses.
2. It needs face-to-face interaction. Online forum’s and portals aren’t enough.
3. Is for any competitive business regardless of size or sector – so we need to provide tailored support to start-ups, in particularly.
4. Needs European support.
5. Must have better data and evidence – if we had a more systematic approach to evaluating the impact of these programmes on businesses, we would have better support programmes.

You can read the full document, or download the pdf file here. We would love to know your views.