Conclusions: The legacy of COVID-19 for the creative and cultural industries

Undoubtedly, 2020 will be considered a pivot year where major shifts took place at policy, institutional and individual levels. The cultural and creative sector is large and presents many idiosyncrasies per sub-sector, which responded differently to the pandemic. Similarly, governments’ emergency policy instruments reflected great variance in the structures and resources available, as well as differences in the understanding of the cultural ecosystem as a whole, curiously conceived within strict geographical borders. Overall, the cultural and creative sector came to a still stand, reinvented itself, and got up to date with plans that had not been given the time to develop. Some fundamental changes have taken place, in a line of transformations that have been shaping the cultural and creative industries sector long before the pandemic. It will be up to the sector to decide what awareness is kept and developed, or left as temporary responses to a global crisis with no further implication.

The chapters in this book have documented numerous responses at individual, institutional and policy levels across Europe. [...]