Project partners showcase Culture for Resilience on European level at EU Regions Week in Brussels

The stand at the event’s fair first and foremost featured the towns and municipalities across the Baltic Sea Region awarded the BSR Cultural Pearls title and their good practices in building social resilience through culture.

The event established a crossroad for diverse exchange, bringing policymakers, experts, and local leaders from across Europe together. This gave the opportunity to make the project and Cultural Pearls’ actions wider known on a European level, while also reflecting the successful efforts of the last years when being recognized by different actors.

Project partners ‘Regional Council of Ostrobothnia’ (FI), Varde Municipality (DK) and the Danish Cultural Institute exchanged with various stakeholders on the concept of building social resilience through culture and gave concrete examples from the CuReAPs, the Culture and Resilience Action Plans of the 2024 and 2025 BSR Cultural Pearls. The latter are compiled as methods and cases in the project’s own resource, the interactive Culture for Resilience Platform for good practices that visitors of the fair stand could explore directly on site.

The event was a rewarding experience in more than one sense: not only was a diversity of new people interested in the project and its impact, among them Member of European Parliament Anna-Maja Henriksson, but various stakeholders recognized the project’s work as they had already heard positively about it.

The European Commission’s latest report on macro-regional strategies (COM(2025)196) highlights the Baltic Sea Region as a frontrunner in the green and digital transitions. It also stresses the importance of local development, where smaller cities and communities are key drivers of resilience and innovation. The report mentions the BSR Cultural Pearls project as one of the most striking examples of how macro-regional strategies translate into real change on the ground.

As a partner consortium, we are proud to help municipalities strengthen social cohesion, resilience and creativity through culture in this initiative, from the local to the international level. This work shows that macro-regional strategies are not only policy frameworks from Brussels, which can be a foreign concept to many, but practical tools that empower local actors to contribute to Europe’s sustainable future.

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