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Barcelona to host Second European Forum on Cultural Industries over two days (29 and 30 March) as prologue to Informal Meeting of Ministers of Culture on 31 March More than 500 representatives of European culture seek new strategies to boost the sector.The main point of interest during the first day of the event will be the unveiling of the preliminary version of the Green paper on cultural and creative industries, produced by the European Commission on the basis of prior discussions between the cultural industries platform and the ad hoc governmental working party. The data and statistics in this report are highly revealing, since they provide a real map of European culture and its habits and trends.The work agenda planned for Monday 29 March will also involve making progress on and looking in greater depth at the five areas for discussion to be covered during this event: (1) the financing of cultural industries (financial intervention mechanisms, SME sustainability, etc.), (2) raising professional standards in cultural industries (new skills arising from the move to digitisation, mobility of talent, etc.), (3) internationalisation of cultural products (local production in global markets, internationalisation and cooperation strategies, etc.), (4) intellectual property and copyright management, (5) regional and local development (culture and regional development, European programmes for local and regional development). [source: Nieuwsbank]