A recently published study brought surprising clarity: In a comparison of EU regions, the Munich metropolitan region has now reached the top position in the cultural and creative industries due to disproportionate sector growth.
Nowhere in the European creative clusters such as Milan, Amsterdam, Barcelona or Vienna are there such growth rates in value creation and such high shares of the overall economy as in the Munich cluster of creative industries.
Eleven submarkets of the cultural and creative industries
The cultural economy is very heterogeneous and includes the music industry, book market, art market, film industry, broadcasting, performing arts market, design, architecture and press.
The advertising and software/games sub-sectors are considered creative industries. These eleven sub-sectors provide important impetus for the city's future-oriented development. They are drivers of innovation and contribute significantly to the city's economic success.
Munich is well positioned
The data report shows that, even compared to other strong sectors in Munich, the cultural and creative industries are one of the most important economic factors in this country. Almost 101,452,000 of the self-employed and companies in the metropolitan region operate here. The greater Munich area is the strongest in this sector in Germany,every third employee subject to social insurance contributions here in any way to do with the cultural and creative industries.
The turnover of 22.5 billion euros represents a share of 3.81% of Munich's overall economy. At the federal level, the contribution of the cultural and creative industries to value added in 2013 was estimated at around 65.3 billion euros, corresponding to a share of 2.3 percent of Germany's gross domestic product (GDP).
In terms of absolute gross value added in Europe, the Munich region leads with 10.4 billion euros, followed by the Milan region with 9.4 billion euros.
Munich’s economic mayor Josef Schmid said:
"In Europe, the cultural and creative industries of the Munich Metropolitan Region are in the fast lane: It has increased its gross value added by 27 percent in three years, and its workforce by 18 percent. The EU Commission now ranks it – alongside Paris and London – among the strongest creative industry clusters in Europe."
Now it is important to bring the Munich region more clearly into the focus of international attention as a creative cluster alongside European metropolitan regions such as London or Paris.
