Facilitation of citizens energy consumption behavioral change in BS cities and municipalities

CCI4Change

Celebrating a CCI4Change milestone | Creatives and municipalities coming together in Jūrmala (LV) and online

23 May 2025

All pictures featured in the article are by Artis Veigurs

On May 8, 2025, creative professionals, local authorities, and sustainability experts from across the Baltic Sea Region gathered at the Jūrmala Central Library to mark a milestone of the CCI4Change project, an EU co-funded initiative exploring how culture and creativity can help shape energy-saving behaviours and drive community-led sustainability, of which Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture has been lead partner.

Hosted by NDPC and Jūrmala Municipality, the event presented key insights from the project’s pilot actions in Latvia, Finland, and Sweden, and officially launched the preliminary version of the CCI4Change Collaboration Toolkit, a practical model to help municipalities and creative professionals build impactful partnerships for citizen engagement.

The toolkit is currently under further refinement and will soon be available on our channels!

A summary of the day

Over the course of the day, attendees took part in keynote talks, presentations, panel discussions, and hands-on workshops that addressed the complex question:

How can cities work with creatives to make the green transition more human, participatory, and effective?

Besides hosting the official launch of the CCI4Change Collaboration Model and Toolkit – a tested framework to help cities and creatives work together on behavioural change and the main deliverables of the project – the event included several other highlights. Among others, we have been delighted to feature keynote talks by several international experts such as Inese Suija-Markova, PhD (Cēsis Municipality, Latvia), Jenny Tingwall-Kornmacher (Region Skåne, Sweden), and Vita Brakovska, PhD (NGO Knowledge and Innovation Society, Latvia), and case presentations from local pilot projects in Jūrmala, Kotka, and Skåne. You can read more about the pilots in the next section.

In the afternoon, participants had the chance to explore the practical dimensions of the CCI4Change project through four parallel workshops.

The workshop Urban Anthropology in Action focused on the Kauguri neighbourhood in Jūrmala, where the local pilot had tested creative community engagement to address issues like housing insulation and urban sustainability.

Meanwhile, drawing on a research article produced within the project and due for publication, another group joined a discussion on the competencies needed for successful collaboration between local authorities, creative professionals, and intermediaries.

In a parallel session, participants were invited to reflect on artistic freedom in institutional partnerships, introducing a set of guidelines designed to preserve the autonomy of artists while working with public and civic actors.

The final workshop offered a hands-on introduction to the newly launched CCI4Change Collaboration Toolkit, where participants were invited to provide feedback on the preliminary version and to discuss how these resources could be improved or adapted for different contexts.

CCI4Change: A collaborative effort

CCI4Change – “Facilitation of Citizens’ Energy Consumption Behavioural Change in Baltic Sea Cities and Municipalities“ – was co-funded by the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme and implemented by a consortium of partners from Latvia, Finland, and Sweden.

At the heart of the project were five artistic pilot initiatives, each rooted in a specific local context and aimed at engaging communities in energy-saving action through cultural practice.

In Latvia, the pilot was developed in the Kauguri neighbourhood of Jūrmala, where artists from the INITIUM residency worked with local residents and city officials to reimagine how creative spaces and civic dialogue can support more sustainable living.

In Finland and Sweden, the cities of Kotka and Skåne tested different models of creative collaboration, each contributing valuable lessons that fed into the final toolkit.

You can read more about the project pilots in our previous dedicated news article: https://ndpculture.org/news/artistic-approaches-to-energy-efficiency-cci4change-launches-five-pilot-projects/