Culture for Resilience Forum 2024: Fostering Community Strength Through Cultural Collaboration

The Culture for Resilience Forum 2024, an event which will focus on the role of culture in societal resilience and community strengthening, is set to take place in Jakobstad, Finland on 7-8 May 2024. Pre-registration is now open.

This forum, organised by the BSR Cultural Pearls project, which is led by the CBSS and co-funded by the Interreg Baltic Sea Region programme, represents a significant initiative in exploring the transformative power of culture and its positive impact on social resilience and community building.

“Strong communities hold the key to overcoming adversity,” said Felix Schartner Giertta, the BSR Cultural Pearls coordinator at the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS). “We shape them through culture – by creating meeting places, starting conversations and sparking innovation that moves a city forward.”  

Besides the current geopolitical issues and security threats caused by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, communities in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) face other challenges. These include demographic shifts and societal ageing, community isolation, economic downturns, and the effects of climate change. 

The event will focus on how culture can be a force in consolidating and empowering communities, thereby enhancing their social resilience. It will notably address the role of culture and creative industries (CCI) and other stakeholders in the field of culture in responding to various challenges faced by medium-sized cities and towns in the BSR. 

“The event is particularly relevant for those working with topics of culture and social resilience in municipal settings,” said Emīls Rode from the Danish Cultural Institute in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, a partner in the BSR Cultural Pearls project and tasked with organising the forum. 

The forum is specifically geared towards municipality representatives from the Baltic Sea Region and stakeholders from the culture and creative industries (CCI). Representatives of cities awarded the title BSR Cultural Pearls 2024, non-selected candidate municipalities, regional, national, and local public authorities, cultural institutions, academics, and knowledge intermediaries from the Baltic Sea Region and beyond are also invited to attend. 

The forum is part of the BSR Cultural Pearls project, which has recently launched the BSR Cultural Pearls Awards, a title that is given every year to four municipalities in the BSR with the most convincing and impactful social resilience action plans.

The municipalities of Jakobstad (Finland), Kiel (Germany), Rūjiena (Latvia) and Svendborg (Denmark) were awarded the BSR Cultural Pearls title in 2024, emerging as winners from a pool of 12 candidates.