European societies are in a moment of transition.
The systems that have shaped our economies, policies, and cultural landscapes are proving insufficient and inappropriate in the face of growing inequalities, environmental collapse, growing conflicts, the crisis of institutions and a deepening sense of instability. The challenge is not just to reform these systems but to redesign them, together, in ways that acknowledge their interdependence.
EIT Culture & Creativity is dedicated to fostering innovation and transformation within the cultural and creative sectors across Europe. Recognizing the vital role that culture and creativity plays in shaping sustainable societies, EIT Culture & Creativity operates on a dual structure, combining a business entity and a non-profit vehicle (e.V).
The EIT Culture & Creativity is dedicated to fostering societal impact by supporting initiatives that strengthen the cultural and creative sectors beyond commercial imperatives. For-profit and not-for-profit organisations are both vital to culture, ensuring accessibility, resilience, and innovation. EIT Culture & Creativity plays a key role in enabling experimentation, cross-sector collaboration, and policy advocacy, while providing structural support for artists, institutions, and creative entrepreneurs. By blending business and non-profit approaches, EIT Culture & Creativity ensures that culture and creativity have the space and mandate to be catalysts for social cohesion and resilience and transformative change. It addresses global challenges in and through EU CCSI by contributing to environmental resilience and increasing social cohesion, supporting the impact goals outlined in the Strategic Agenda 2024-2027.
The Transformation Area is a catalyst for reimagining the systems that shape our cultural and creative ecosystems and their role in society. Driven by the values shared by the New European Bauhaus (NEB) of inclusion, beauty and sustainability, and inspired by the ethos of experimentation, it forges pathways to a better future by challenging traditional structures and exploring radical new possibilities.
EIT CC Transformation Area’s work is informed by a deep understanding of systems thinking and design, where every action considers its ripple effects across interconnected networks. Fuelled by the power of creative and cultural practices, the Transformation Area facilitates trans-sector integration activities and dialogues. It therefore shapes transformative practices, including tools, spaces, encounters, processes, programmes and policies, to question the unquestioned, imagine the unimaginable and learn to learn in paving new co-response-able ways of living and organising together, promoting a sustainable societal transformation.
Empowering Transformation Agents in 2025
Starting in 2025, the program will focus on education as a catalyst for change, offering a comprehensive suite of workshops, immersive learning experiences and mentorship program. These educational initiatives aim to provide participants with the skills and tools necessary to design and implement transformative solutions within their communities and professional sectors. By fostering a deep understanding of systemic thinking and innovation, the program will enable transformation agents to act as leaders and facilitators in their local settings while addressing complex societal challenges.
Piloting Initiatives
In 2025, three STI Pilots will be launched, inviting CCSI Organisations to develop place-based, systemic solutions to pressing societal challenges.
These initiatives will integrate situated innovation, cross-sectoral learning, and governance experiments to create lasting impact at local and regional levels.
These efforts will:
Thanks to this initiative the EIT Culture & Creativity will launch an open call in 2026.
A Vision for Systemic Impact
EIT Culture and Creativity’s Societal Transformation Initiatives reflect a bold vision: to empower individuals and communities to tackle the most pressing challenges of our time through systemic innovation. By investing in education, fostering regional collaboration, and ensuring the active participation of transformation agents, the initiative seeks to create a ripple effect of change – one that transcends sectors and regions, shaping a more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable future.
The Knowledge platform will strategically pave the way towards societal transformation and a paradigm shift, where culture and creativity are embraced by the public, private and civic sector to symbiotically and creatively experiment in mission-oriented innovations towards societal welfare for all. This includes setting the strategic agenda, vision and long-term mission for the larger EIT Culture & Creativity community, while paving needed policy paths in Europe and formulating and exploring new forms and ways of knowing that can inspire for societal impact.
Systemic transformation demands new narratives that redefine value, collaboration, and funding models.
This initiative aims to develop research projects that strengthen culture and resilience by proposing methodologies to evaluate cultural and social well-being beyond conventional economic metrics while exploring cross-sectoral collaborations to shape future economic systems that sustain culture and creativity.
NEB Lighthouse Projects are demonstrators entailing relevant outcomes in terms of policy and sector recommendations; toolkits for sustainable societal transformation, white papers and manifestos
In 2025, EIT CC will engage with the legacy networks spunning out of the Lighthouse projects and carry out a participated process to produce a systemic narrative of the achievements of the Lighthouse projects, showing the benefits of these projects and assess the potential of further development and implementations of some activities and outputs.
Additionally, EIT CC will act as facilitator to create learning journeys and knowledge transfer to targeted groups for societal systemic transformation.
Lastly, it will provide access to expertise in sustainable design and production as well as creative and design approaches, leveraging EIT CC’s ecosystem of partners across architecture, fashion, and other CCSI domains.
In 2025, the EIT Culture & Creatiity will create a co-designed, high-accessibility experienceable assessment report.
Starting 2026, the EIT Culture & Creativity will design and launch specific open Calls to further funds the Lighthouse projects.
EIT CC will serve as the knowledgeable facilitator for the NEB Academy, respecting and building on this bottom-up structure and contributing to its long-term setup and continuous institutional organisation for self-sustained strategic growth and outreach.
In 2025 the EIT CC will carry out a feasibility study, to synergise with all the active actors and explore the conditions and requirements to set up a legal entity for the NEB Academy and its operations. This NEB Academy model will include both skills and professional education as well as higher education courses and programs.
It will be based on four elements:
In 2025 EIT Culture & Creativity will collaborate with the existing NEB initiatives to build up the relevant curriculum for the establishment of a NEB Academy starting in 2026.
The SME Adaptor is a strategic initiative designed to support independent fashion businesses in their transition towards circular and sustainable practices. In collaboration with the NEB Academy, the program provides targeted training, expert mentorship, and financial support to drive innovation and regulatory compliance within the creative industries.
In 2025, the focus is on developing the program’s offer, conducting outreach, training SMEs, and selecting businesses for pilot projects. These selected pilots will receive financial support in 2026 to implement their transformation strategies.
In 2025, the first phase of the Adaptor programme will select SMEs focusing on circularity in the Fashion Industry. This Adaptor programme will scale up in 2026 to open access to funding for the best successful SMEs of the programme.
From 2026, EIT Culture & Creativity is willing to play a pivotal role for the Fashion Industry and develop further its programme.
Europe currently faces several societal risks, including rising economic inequality, the impact of climate change, political polarization, and threats to democratic institutions. Migration pressures, energy security concerns, and the rise of disinformation also challenge social cohesion.
These risks demand urgent, collaborative solutions to ensure a resilient and equitable future.
Resilience Roadmaps are co-creative processes that bring together our partners, our Strategic Topic Groups, and invited institutions to collaboratively explore the question, what resilience means for our partners’ specific needs and what kind of actions can be put in place to boost it.
In 2025, the EIT Culture & Creativity will support the design of Resilience Roadmap to mutualise responsibilities between companies and design practices based on shared values.
From 2026 and onwards, EIT Culture & Creativity will be equiped to guide organisations in the CCSI and further in their Resilience plan and strategy.
Strategic Topic Groups are thematic working groups within the EIT Culture & Creativity Knowledge Innovation Community. They function as think-do tanks and innovation sandboxes, carrying out activities aligned with societally relevant themes. These themes are either directly connected to the priority areas outlined in EIT CC Strategic Agenda 2024-2027 or address transversal topics through a trans-sectoral approach across the Cultural and Creative Sectors and Industries (CCSIs). In doing so, Strategic Topic Groups contribute to addressing key challenges and achieving impact goals defined in the Strategic Agenda, while operationalising the priorities and values of both the EIT Culture and Creativity and the European Union.
Strategic Topic Groups thrive on three core missions:
Knowledge activation and experimentation
STGs activate and apply expert knowledge through collaborative experimentation, piloting, and continuous learning. By testing methodologies, tools, and models in real or simulated environments, they generate actionable insights that address emerging societal challenges. STGs also serve as spaces for transdisciplinary exchange, bridging scientific and entrepreneurial approaches.
Policy and strategy development on request
STGs’ expert knowledge contributes to shaping strategic direction, by providing ideation input to EIT CC’s Strategic Agenda and Business Plan, helping define impact pathways and thematic priorities. Additionally, STGs may support policy development in the CCSIs generative topic-specific insights upon request by the European Commission, national governments, or regional authorities.
Non-EIT funding mobilisation
STGs gather like-minded actors around specific thematic areas that cut across sectors, fostering a shared strategic focus fuelled by complementary expertise. As such, STGs operate as high-impact consortia that are well-positioned to access EU-wide funding opportunities, playing a key role in driving financial sustainability for EIT Culture & Creativity while delivering systemic impact for the CCSIs.
The Strategic Groups are driven by the Partners of EIT Culture & Creativity to share, co-create and co-design future solutions.
