POWERING ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP TO DRIVE THE CLIMATE TRANSITION

Project Information

PACESETTERS

Grant agreement ID: 101132610

DOI

10.3030/101132610

EC signature date 30 October 2023

Start date 1 March 2024

End date 28 February 2027

Funded under

• Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Total cost

€ 3 771 900,00

EU contribution

€ 3 771 900,00

Coordinated by

NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PACESETTERS (POWERING ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP TO DRIVE THE CLIMATE TRANSITION)

Reporting period: 2024-03-01 to 2025-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

PACESETTERS explores how arts and culture, creativity and cultural heritage can adapt to, contribute to and ultimately push the pace of the climate transition. It brings together partners and places, creative practices and research perspectives that are out of the ordinary: creatives and climate scientists, artistic researchers and rural entrepreneurs, cultural workers and open source communities. PACESETTERS responds to the abstract challenge of climate transitions by shifting from a model of entrepreneurship based on individual, short-term incentives to one driven by co-agency and new capacities to act together in sustainable ways.
 
PACESETTERS will identify and analyse advanced practices that run transversally across the cultural and creative sectors; contextualise the results of co-research in three real-world laboratories of social imagination located in Genalguacil and Valle del Genal, Spain; Nowa Huta in Kraków, Poland; and Galway, Ireland. This will be followed by the development and promotion of iterative support and evaluation frameworks, resulting in a critical evaluation and comprehensive demonstration of the real potential of CCIs to drive the climate transition forward.
 
PACESETTERS target groups include artists and creatives, solo entrepreneurs, SMEs, and companies within the CCIs, Academia and research institutions, cultural institutions, sectoral networks and clusters, impact investment, political decision makers and public sector administration.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

PACESETTERS provide visibility and evidence of CCI capacities in the context of the climate transition: The Open Call for Emerging, Advanced and Novel Practices invites artists and creators to submit proposals and examples of projects where arts and culture, heritage and creativity is either adapting and contributing to or driving the climate transition.

PACESETTERS co-create approaches keeping pace with the challenges of the climate transition: 12 Creative Case Studies explore specific challenges and opportunities according to three main themes: Decentralised Architectures, Collective Intelligences and Shared Creativity.

PACESETTERS link emerging value propositions and questions of justice: Significant advances have been made in articulating the relationship between non-substitutable natural capital and climate justice, while keeping in mind the previously identified issues of spatial justice, data justice and generational justice.

PACESETTERS foster social imagination: Alongside the Creative Case Studies, 3 Real World Laboratories were launched and established in Genalguacil (Spain), Galway (Ireland) and Nowa Huta (Poland) to create business ideas with a potential to set the pace of the climate transition.

PACESETTERS assess economic, aesthetic and environmental sustainability: Within the local contexts of the Real World Laboratories a bespoke pre-accelerator model for the CCIs is currently being developed. The ‘Compass for Advanced Practices' provides a navigation tool for PACESETTERS target groups.

PACESETTERS kickstart processes to re-contextualise innovation: The PACESETTERS Summit serves as a launchpad to connect existing platforms, resources, and capacities, creating support modules that apply the key findings of the research across sectors. Developed as a prototype Polyclinic of Creative Practice it will be followed up in 6 Local Impact Academies.

PACESETTERS build communities across sectors and geographies to push the pace of the transition: PACESETTERS has already begun to build, strengthen and connect local and trans-local creative communities to bundle knowledge, experience and expertise across new divisions and aggregations of creative labour.

PACESETTERS propose a knowledge and evidence-based transformation framework that synthesises the experiences of pre-accelerators to exemplify and anticipate valorisation strategies as circular processes by engaging a variety of stakeholders, sectors, and disciplines.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

PACESETTERS unique approach allows to rethink the specific and often contested societal impact of arts and culture not just on the basis of its good intentions but through co-created scientific or evidence-based outcomes. In three Real World Laboratories, a multitude of previously unrecognised opportunities have been revealed and are currently being examined and implemented as advanced ventures. Through numerous investigations, reflections and iterative consultations, it has become clear that the PACESETTERS research project offers unanticipated opportunities to unlock the hidden potential of arts, culture, creativity and heritage in a variety of unique contexts.

The proposition of understanding art and culture as a driver of sustainable development is already attracting a steadily growing number of innovation agents and market actors from across the CCIs to create, valorise and evaluate business ideas in rural and remote areas. Ultimately, the results of the need finding process in the three labs acknowledge the need to develop counter measures against gentrification and depopulation while fostering diversity and multiple value creation. PACESETTERS project has successfully begun compiling a portfolio of advanced, sustainable business ideas developed and presented as advanced ventures.

The growing communities of PACESETTERS and their poly-local networks across Europe and beyond are supposed to be generate economic impact through a model of trans-local, cross-sectoral platform cooperatives which translate the idea and model of cooperatives from local into trans-local, sector-specific into cross sectoral constellations of co-agency and co-ownership. This model will enable a decisive increase in sharing and mitigating risks in terms of financial and environmental sustainability. It will also attract long-term financing and impact investment, as it leverages new technologies, helping CCIs to prepare to contribute to climate transition, strengthening cooperation between actors within the CCIs as well as between CCIs and other economic sectors and industries, and creating new market opportunities for CCI stakeholders.