About CCSC

Cultural and Creative Spaces and Cities (CCSC) is a policy project co-funded by the European Commission. From 2018 to 2021, the project has developed new ways for cities and regions to bring together the public administration and the cultural sector to co-create public policies. CCSC shows that culture and commoning practices can transform neighbourhoods and cities into more sustainable places, catalysing better lives for their communities.

To achieve the overall goal of the project,  three key objectives were set:

1. EXPLORE: Explore and test how to best approach current urban challenges through commoning practices, co-creation and policy development.
2. LEARN: Foster and facilitate peer-to-peer learning, exchange and training of commoning practices within cities and between cities and regions.
3. RESEARCH, DISSEMINATE & SUSTAIN: Research and document the outcomes of peer-to-peer learning and make them available for wider use via open-source models, both for policy development, commoning politics and co-creation.

The Preparation Phase of CCSC (Nov 2018 - March 2019) included:

• An analysis of current policies, recommendations and best-case examples in Europe.
• Mapping of relevant European cultural and creative spaces and local stakeholders.
• Introduction and training on core methodologies and approaches for the project partners

The Implementation Phase started in April 2019 with the Cultural and Creative Spaces and Cities Conference in Brussels. Other activities in this phase include:

• 21 workshops with local stakeholders organised by the Urban Labs (May 2019 - Dec 2019).
• 14 Traineeships for Urban Labs and their Handshake Partners (Sep 2019 - Jan 2020.
• An open call for participants to join five Urban Explorations and three co-creative policy events.
• 4 thematic Urban Explorations (Mar 2020 - Sep 2020) hosted by the following Urban Labs: Kosice, Timisoara Madrid and Helsinki.
• A series of hybrid Co-creative Policy Events in Ghent, Belgium and one hybrid event (Jun - Sep 2020).
• A Digital Conference (Feb 2021).

The Research Phase (Nov 2018 - Oct 2020) of the project was a close collaboration between the researchers' team from the University of Antwerp (UA) and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF). While the UA  focused on optimal regulations and juridical frameworks, ECF will focus on the methodologies, deliberative processes and concrete tools for developing co-creative policies. The research design and methods used in the project are heavily inspired by the innovative ‘convoking’ method developed by the Canadian social scientists Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish (2014) for their research into social movements.

The Dissemination Phase (Oct 2020 - May 2021) delivered the outputs, conclusion, recommendations and dissemination of results, including:

• A digital knowledge base platform for ‘Urban Regeneration through Industrial Heritage Sites’.
• A digital benchmarking system for cultural and creative spaces (Lund, Nov 2018 - May 2021).
• Publications and reports (Jun 2020 - Feb 2021): 3 policy reports out of the co-creative policy events including Policy Analysis and Recommendations; 1 synthesised final study; 1 research book ‘Commons.Between Dreams and Reality'.
• An Online Toolkit (Oct 2020 - Feb 2021).
• A new postgraduate programme—“Curating the City” offering international Master’s students, PhD students and professionals courses in urban cultural politics based on commoning practices, civil self-organisation, shared leadership, collaborative entrepreneurship and deliberative democratic processes.

Results: CCSC aims to lay the groundwork for cultural policies to be implemented in future societies. We envisage a future where individuals and organisations are vibrantly present in all areas of a shared European public space/discourse and transnationally exchanging experiences and ideas with a common ground to build up new trust relationships based on cultural exchange and understanding through:

• Development of hands-on cultural policies, based on mutual learning and common practices.
• Development of alternative organisational models in civil society and public spaces.
• Better synergies between cultural organisations, creative industries and public administration.
• Helping culture and creative industries contribute to new urban and sustainable developments.
• Co-created policy development for cities and regions at the European Union level.
• Recommendations on P2P learning, co-creation and cultural policy including funding at local and EU levels.