Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy (Menparekraf) Teuku Riefky Harsya received an audience with the Mayor of Surakarta, Respati Ardi, together with the Surakarta Game Developer Community (Surgadeva) at the Autograph Tower, Jakarta, Monday, June 23, 2025. This meeting is an important moment to explore strategic collaboration in increasing the contribution of the creative economy sector to national economic growth starting from the regions. Menparekraf Teuku Riefky emphasized the importance of establishing a Creative Economy Service at the regional level as a concrete effort to manage local potential professionally. "The approach to creative economy actors should be like business people. If managed seriously, these creators can grow to a professional level," he explained. Through training curated together with local governments, acceleration efforts will focus on improving commercialization, promotion, and network expansion capabilities, both nationally and internationally. The city of Solo is expected to be a strategic partner in this process.
The Mayor of Surakarta, Respati Ardi, enthusiastically welcomed the synergy. According to him, Solo has great potential in terms of artists and creatives, but is still faced with the challenge of a lack of quality jobs. "We don't want the title 'creative' to be just a symbol. We want Solo residents to work and develop in this sector," he said. Meanwhile, Arif Setiawan from Surgadeva Public Relations revealed the great potential of the game sub-sector that his community is working on. With more than 200 members, 10 active studios, and a series of marketable game IPs, Surgadeva is ready to contribute by establishing a game academy in Solo. One of Surgadeva's successes is the development of the Epic Conquest game, which ranked second in Indonesia with a total of 12 million downloads. Closing the meeting, the Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy emphasized his commitment to supporting cross-sector collaboration in order to expand the impact of creative economic activities.
