This event served as a networking platform for creative industry developers, institutions and entrepreneurs to meet and begin new collaborations. Current topics, such as the world politics and national creative industry strategies, as well as various entities seeking to find sustainable and resilient business models were discussed to understand where creatives stand as professionals and how people can benefit from these opportunities. 

“EIT Culture & Creativity has the opportunity and responsibility to contribute to meaningful societal transformation, leveraging the power of creative and design approaches, as well as cultural practices,” said Ambra Trotto, our Director of Societal Transformation. “Transforming society, our ways of working, the way that we give form to new services, products, systems, business models and governance, requires innovative forms of support and collaboration formats. Only through radical and imaginative collaboration, all actors in society can be empowered in being able to respond and care of their spaces of action in a way that weaves authentic resilience into our ways of working.” 

Resilience, a force needed in our current realm 

The North Regional Hub, based in Helsinki, has its main focal point in smart, resilient and sustainable leadership — so the topic of the first ecosystem get-together was easy to choose. The Open Day kicked off during Oddfest, a new creative festival, where art, business, and society collide in Helsinki, the previous week with a panel discussion on creative business failures and how to survive them.  

In Stockholm, we carried out the sustainability and resilience topic from different angles led by Jenny Grettve, our Head of Transformation, who opened the discussion by underlining the importance of building resilience for brave transformation. She argued that resilient leadership is not just about guiding an organisation through disruption, it is about shaping conditions in which life, ideas, people, and ecosystems can adapt, regenerate and flourish. It’s about listening deeply, making space for emotion, staying connected to purpose, and acting with integrity even when everything around you is shifting. It’s about being both rooted and responsive. Smart leadership isn’t fast decision-making for its own sake. It’s the ability to discern, to hold complexity, and to know when to act and when to take a step back.  

The urgency to keep Europe strong, innovative and resilient 

Throughout the discussions, we heard and learned insights on resilience and sustainable leadership on different levels, covering national and international level of development work and need to react, as well as business or local specific ways of adding value to cultural resilience work.  

Sweden and Finland have been building national strategies for cultural sectors and creative industries just recently. The governments want to strengthen their position as leading countries for the cultural and creative industries with well-adapted support system for the sector to grow, and furthermore to employ the sectors more closely to the cross-industry cooperation among other parts of the countries’ economical life. This was discussed in a panel, which consisted of Robert Nilsson from Swedish Ministry of Culture, Kimmo Aulake from Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and John Newbigin OBE, the Ambassador of CCSI’s for Mayor of London, moderated by Marlene Johansson, RISE, and Kati Uusi-Rauva, EIT Culture & Creativity North. Also New European Bauhaus and the sector’s importance to contribute to inclusive, sustainable and resilient living environment were highlighted during the two days.  

John Newbigin OBE, who was also the keynote for the second day in Moderna Museet, stated that what we witness is an ongoing culture war, where some of the current populist politicians are using culture as their vehicle to undermine the ability of nations to stay afloat in global competition: “We need to stick together to keep Europe strong and resilient and also to stay innovative in our continent”.  

The Academy Awards 2025 winning animated film Flow (Straume in Latvian) and the idea behind the production set-up was presented by Matiss Kaza, the producer, who said they produced the film entirely in Europe but had to go to Central Europe to find sufficient amount of talent, because Latvia does not provide enough animators. Nevertheless, they want to keep future productions also on the continent and provide an alternative to Hollywood productions. For this, they will need European know-how and networks, as well as funding and business support. This will build independent unique animations ecosystem in Europe.  

“There’s never enough networking!” 

In the post-pandemic world, it seems all the more important to be able to meet on site with old and new colleagues.  EIT Culture & Creativity seeks to provide as many and useful events as possible to strengthen and grow the networks, as innovations and information sharing is totally a people business and the unity of the community strengthens its ability to adapt change.

The partners join this knowledge and innovation community (KIC) mainly to meet with new organisations to get new insight: “The benefit of partnering with the community is that on one hand we can hear about inspiring practices from other members and peer practitioners, who share their learning and experiences, but we can also connect with them as partners and explore different forms of collaboration, sometimes also applying for funding from the EIT CC together”, says Nina Bozic from RISE who guided a discussion on cases, and continues: “For example, during this event we heard the stories of Jennie Schaeffer Andersson, the director of Västmanlands museum, who talked about different projects with citizens, researchers, and artists that the “participatory museum” she leads facilitates to contribute to societal transformation around complex societal challenges, such as climate change. We also heard interesting examples of Birgitta Ralston, a designer, curator and entrepreneur who practices regenerative design through interdisciplinary research projects in collaboration with different kinds of stakeholders, some of which are then commercialized and scaled up for market.”  

Work will continue 

EIT Culture & Creativity North will continue to discuss resilient and sustainable leadership as one of the focal themes in the region, during the series of annual regional partner events as well as the Open Day concept for wider ecosystem. “The onsite events are a central tool for community management and nurturing contacts within it, as well as to match people from different organizations together”, states Sami Jääskeläinen, Business and Ecosystem Manager of EIT Culture & Creativity. The immediate feedback from the audience was positive, yet more time to mingle was a strong wish as well as more cases from entrepreneurs and organizations.  

Hope to see you at our Open Day next year!