GrandAngoulême’s Hub of Innovation is named “Caravane Creative Lab”. It aims to create a link between the cultural and creative industries and the territory.

The Hub is both immaterial and material. Immaterial because it is not contained in a building or in a specific street but it consists of itineraries along the GrandAngoulême metropolitan trail. On the other hand, the Hub can be considered as material, since its existence is linked to its members’ pedestrian walks through the city and all its buildings. The Hub is a project platform that meets outdoors and on the move, in dialogue with the territory. It invites participants to discover new stories and new aspects of the agglomeration’s heritages. It offers the members a brand new space for meeting, sharing, talking, getting to know each other, even eating together.

The Caravane Creative Lab is therefore a network of local actors, an innovative platform for inter-learning and creation.

The Grand-Angoulême Actions

1. Investigating and Mapping the historical heritageto reveal the sense of the place

Expected results:

• Economic: easier access to data on historical heritage for the population and businesses in the area. Rehabilitation of places along the route for the installation of future economic activities
• Social: the valorisation and sharing of stories and popular heritage linked to the life of the nhabitants with the population and the companies of the territory
• Environmental: a better protection of the green and blue heritage of the agglomeration and a renewed link between citizens and the nature of everyday life, in particular with the urban rivers
• Cultural: a better knowledge of the different forms of heritage for the population and the companies of the territory.

2. Co-Design a Metropolitan Trail as a framework for “Caravane Creative Lab”

Expected results:

• Economic: increased use of the trail’s surroundings with local economic spin-offs (cafés,restaurants, markets, hotels)
• Social: metropolitan walking is a growing social practice
• Environmental: a reduction of car traffic for short journeys. Restoration of forgotten pedestrian continuities
• Cultural: the inhabitants and economic players know the agglomeration like the back of their hand.

3. Set up an itinerant Hub of innovation: “Caravane Creative Lab”

Expected results:

• Economic: new skills for professionals
• Social: better cohesion between associations, citizens and professionals
• Environmental: a positive valorisation of walking in the city and an evolution of practices beyond the “Caravane” participants.
• Cultural: a better knowledge of the historical heritage by local actors.

4. Create and run an entrepreneurs hip/artist open call to raise awareness about cultural heritage (transmedia)

Expected results:

• Economic: proposals that are sustainable and can lead to future commissions and investments
• Social: places that gain in frequentation after a phase of oblivion
• Environmental: places and biotopes that are sustainably enhanced, mediatised and told through the work of the candidates
• Cultural: a population that is more aware of and more conscious of the issues linked to historical heritage.