Tehran, Iran - March 8, 2024 - The Manowin event will be held concurrently with INOTEX 2024 to showcase the achievements of the creative and cultural sector, announced Sajjad Abbasi Fashami, Secretary of the INOTEX event, at a press conference.

"One of the goals of holding this event is to have an innovative and forward-looking approach, and not to neglect the daily needs of society in various fields and levels," Fashami said. "Entrepreneurs also play a role in the creative industries, so this event is being held with the aim of introducing a culture of innovation and technology that leads to entrepreneurship and wealth creation, and also in line with the macro-strategy 2 of the Comprehensive Scientific Map of the Country to help with the discourse of knowledge-based economy and present the achievements of soft and cultural technologies in the country."

The Manowin event will be held concurrently with INOTEX from May 7-10. Creative houses and active cultural industries can register for the exhibition section through this website, with the registration deadline being March 20, 2024.

"This event will be held in different sections," Fashami said. "In the event section, we will have a content production space that will be presenting content during the four days of the exhibition."

"In this regard, considering that the largest statistical population in the country is the cultural and soft industries, it is necessary for the culture of innovation and technology to enter different groups in society," he said. "The global market for creative industries was over $2,600 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to $3,400 billion by 2024."

Fashami said the cost of setting up a booth at the event is 14 million IRRs per square meter. Knowledge-based companies will be exempt from paying 70% of the costs in cooperation with the Innovation Fund, and creative companies will be exempt from paying 50% of the costs. Creative companies will receive support from the Headquarters for the Development of Soft and Cultural Technologies to participate in this event.

60 Strategic Measures of the Soft and Cultural Technologies Development Document Implemented

Masoud Hasanlou, Secretary of the Headquarters for Soft and Cultural Technologies of the Vice Presidency for Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy, also spoke at the meeting, saying that the mechanism of the headquarters is inter-agency and under the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution and has been established in the Vice Presidency for Science to coordinate with the relevant cultural organizations.

"Cultural businesses are considered to be productive currents," Hasanlou said. "Cultural and identity-building businesses in areas such as music, cinema, animation, games, entertainment, and education and learning have not become sustainable businesses, while one of the country's capacities is the cultural fields."

Hasanlou referred to the drafting and implementation of the National Document for the Development of Soft and Cultural Technologies and the serious focus on the document on cultural and creative industries, the studies conducted to review the current conditions of the country in the areas of the headquarters' mandate, the review and evaluation of projects to improve national resilience and international competitiveness, the review and polling of relevant executive bodies and the design of a prioritization structure for the nineteen fields of the Soft and Cultural Technologies Development Document, the planning and presentation of the draft implementation of the 60 strategic measures emphasized in the National Document for the Development of Soft and Cultural Technologies to the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, the signing of a technology development agreement in the field of soft technologies and cultural and creative industries with the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade, and the signing of an agreement with the Organization of Schools and Non-Governmental Centers and the development of public participation by the Ministry of Education and Training are among other actions taken by the headquarters.

The secretary of the Headquarters for Soft and Cultural Technologies identified the lack of enforcement of documents as one of the country's challenges, saying that no independent budget has been defined for the cultural sector; in such a way that cultural organizations such as Cultural Heritage, Ministry of Science, Broadcasting and Islamic Universities do not have an independent budget in this area and we need a sufficient budget to implement this document.

Hasanlou said that the total cultural budget for the nineteen cultural fields in the country is $1.5 billion, while in the United States alone, seven to eight billion dollars of government investment has been made in video games. This is while the ratio of investment to return on investment in industry is one to five, while in the cultural field it is one to ten and one to twenty.

Our focus is on implementing the headquarters' strategic document, as we believe that strengthening the country's creative ecosystem is what will bring about change.

Hasanlou said that an agreement has been signed with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts in the field of technology development worth over 3000 billion IRRs. Other actions taken by the headquarters include the event for the development and exchange of technology in the toy industry, which was held in cooperation with the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade and the Toy Supervision Council. The Headquarters for the Development of Soft and Cultural Technologies has good interactions with the first actor in the field of culture, which is the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and other issues include cooperation in holding the Fajr Computer Game Festival, establishing a specialized investment fund for computer games and holding the event of innovations and technologies of the Islamic Covering Era in cooperation with the Public Culture Council of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

The Secretary of the Headquarters for Soft and Cultural Technologies of the Vice Presidency for Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy of the President noted that more than 50 elite meetings were held with the participation of more than 100 activists and elites in the fields and clusters of soft technology and creative industries in the form of specific working groups. The Headquarters for the Development of Soft and Cultural Technologies has held events, either exclusively or in cooperation with other organizations, in order to create discourse and promote the creative and innovative ecosystem.

Referring to the fact that efforts have been made to identify elites in creative industries for the development of the priority areas identified in the headquarters' document, the Secretary of the Headquarters for Soft and Cultural Technologies said: "Creative companies are companies that have created an innovation advantage in their business process. More than two thousand creative companies and 107 creative houses have been established in recent years, which have the ability to guide and grow the actors in the creative industries."