The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Independent Creative Activities in Two Large Cities in Romania

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had both financial and activity-related effects on a number of areas of activity, among which those involving the creative industries have proved to be weak in their capacity to survive the halting of all events held in physical spaces. The long-term effects of the current health crisis are bringing about changes in cultural demand and offer and highlighting the need to adapt and to think of new ways of functioning. Taking its cue from this situation, the research underlying our article set out to investigate the ways in which Romania’s independent creative sector is adapting. We achieved this by means of conducting 25 semi-structured interviews and undertaking case studies of two cities that are among the most effervescent from the point of view of cultural and creative industries, Timișoara and Cluj-Napoca. With the strengthening of this sector as the aim in view, the forms of early social resilience we identified are capable in the short term of taking action to ensure the survival of some of the spaces; in the medium term, through activating mechanisms that encourage entrepreneurial spirit, they will be able to adapt to any external shock.

What Makes Urban Communities More Resilient to COVID-19? A Systematic Review of Current Evidence

“…Robustness as an outcome-oriented characteristic aims to enhance the strength of social resilience itself to withstand disaster impacts. For example, using culture and customs to enhance cohesion and organizational strength can improve the robustness of the community [ 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ]; improving social health care coverage will improve social robustness [ 54 , 55 ]; and adaptive transformation of social capital helps to counteract the persistence of COVID-19 [ 56 , 57 ].…”

Creativity in times of war and pandemics

“…Thirdly, we can confront a lot of critique of the concept, composition, and methodologies towards the creative economy. Popa et al (2021) notice that the COVID-19 pandemic has financial and operational consequences for many areas of human activity, including those related to the creative industries with their ability to survive by stopping all events in physical space. Long-term effects of the current health crisis are causing changes in cultural demand and supply and stressing our need to adapt and think about new ways of working.…”

Pendekatan Berbasis Phygital dalam Menjembatani Kesenjangan dalam Transformasi Digital

“…Phygital Experience ini menggunakan kemajuan teknologi untuk membuat layanan konsumen semakin mudah, cepat dan akurat (Burke, 2002;Joseph & Stone, 2003). Tujuan dari kegiatan ini adalah untuk mensukseskan pulihnya ekonomi yang terdampak pandemi dan memperkuat digitalisasi pada sektor ekonomi kreatif (Khlystova et al, 2022;Popa et al, 2021).…”