A new Legal Clinic to assist artists in Limburg
Following the attribution of the Faculty Innovation Prize by the Faculty of Law and the support of the Province of Limburg, a new Legal Clinic is going to start operating as from next academic year.
The Indie Art Legal Clinic will provide pro-bono advice to independent artists (visual artists, musicians, performers, street artists, film makers, game designers, programmers, etc.). The advice is given by mixed teams of both master and bachelor students, upon request from an artist. Students work together by identifying the problem, researching possible solutions and issuing a report with the proposed solution, all under supervision of a faculty member and an experienced lawyer. The client can meet with the team after this report is issued, for a face-to-face consultation (which is made under the supervision of either the faculty member and/or a lawyer as well).
Our students are drawn from the Advanced Master on Intellectual Property and Knowledge Management and from the Jean Monnet Bachelor Course Intellectual Property in the Digital Single Market.
The Clinic is the first of its kind in the Netherlands. While there are several legal clinics in the country (including in Maastricht), there is none that provides services to the artistic community. This is an enormous gap, given that many independent artists in Europe are Dutch or live in the Netherlands.
Our University is known for its innovative education methods. A legal clinic of this kind will help cement this well-deserved reputation and foster its standing as an innovative actor in legal education. The Clinic provides students with a hands-on experience in intellectual property through client counselling, thereby encouraging students to delve deeper into the learned material and giving them the opportunity to apply their knowledge to real-life cases. Students will get a better idea of what the work in the field of intellectual property and art entails. Receiving this insight through the work at the clinic might be more feasible for many students than doing a full-time internship or job besides their studies. Thereafter, students benefit from the acquired practical skills, as well as the acknowledgement in their curriculum vitae in case they want to pursue the work in the field any further. The training provided in the clinic is also able to fuel a more intense engaging with course materials and may in turn make students more enthusiastic and active in class. Moreover, the clinic serves as a platform of communication: pairing master- with bachelor students furthers education goals by integrating different levels of education within the same project. Bachelor students get extra guidance from master students, and they can have a sneak peak of what a masters in intellectual property would offer them; master students get extra experience in training more junior colleagues. At the same time, the clinic can prove fruitful in connecting students with local artists and thereby inspire more cross-disciplinary work. Potential future students might also choose Maastricht University not only for the well-known quality of its programmes in Intellectual Property Law, but also because it offers them the opportunity to experience, within its premises, concrete cases of intellectual property, while providing for an enriching engagement with the local artistic community.
In addition to providing students with practical training, the Clinic meets existing needs of Limburg-based artists, while at the same time drawing our Faculty closer to the (artistic) community. Maastricht has a vibrant art scene that is promoted by numerous events throughout the year, such as TEFAF, the CrossCurrents Festival, the WE Festival or the PAS Festival. Moreover, several artistic schools and centres (Van Eyck Academy, the Conservatorium Maastricht, the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Kumulus) generate numerous young creatives who might stumble upon a variety of legal questions on their path to the professional world.
The Clinic is aligned with the UM-programme Community at the CORE, and with the four core values that the Faculty of Law adheres to: it offers a platform for an organic cooperation between students at different levels of education, staff, and society; it stands for innovative teaching; it promotes intensive contact between staff and students in a small-scale teaching environment; it broadens students’ perspectives and job opportunities, and encourages creative problem-solving; it contributes to modernise PBL and to intensify cooperation with practitioners.
How to reach us
Faculty of Law, Bouillonstraat 3 6211LH Maastricht
The Clinic is opened from September to June (by appointment only)
Founders: Ana Ramalho, Camille Beckmann and Carolina Moreira
Director and contact person: Ana Ramalho