Christoph Weckerle

Director, Zurich Centre for Creative Economies
Zurich University of the Arts

Switzerland

For more than fifteen years I have been working both in senior positions in higher arts education and as a cultural policy researcher at Zurich University of the Arts, the biggest art university in Switzerland and one of the major multidisciplinary universities of its kind in Europe. One activity goes hand in hand with the other. As a member of the ELIA Representative Board, I would like to share my experiences, and I am very motivated to co-create new settings to move forward arts universities in Europe.

As the current Director (since 2021) of the Zurich Centre for Creative Economies we focus on different forms of value creation at the intersections of arts and culture with areas such as policy-making, the economy and society at large. The fields of action of the cultural sector are at the core of our research which also implies processes and practices of experimentation. As a cultural policy researcher, I collaborate with a large number of research institutions in Switzerland and different parts of the world.

As former director (for 15 years) of the Department of Cultural Analysis, board member and vice president research at Zurich University of the Arts, my activities were focused on the strategic level. At the department level, I was responsible for 300 staff members, two master programmes and a bachelor programme, three research institutes and the Museum of Design Zurich.