Research on Societal Transformation through Creativte approaches and Cultural Practices

EIT Culture & Creativity’s mission is to transform the cultural and creative sectors and industries (CCSI) and address sector-specific challenges when it comes to education, innovation and business creation and foster interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration. In this way, EIT Culture and Creativity unlocks the innovative potential of its fragmented ecosystem, contributing to Europe’s transition and accelerating transformation towards sustainable and responsible economic growth of EU CCSI.

By blending business and non-profit approaches, EIT Culture & Creativity ensures that culture and creativity have the space and mandate to be catalysts for societal transformation, fostering social cohesion and resilience. Recognizing the vital role the CCSI play in shaping sustainable societies, this request for proposals seeks to bridge gaps between different practices, such as cultural, financial and industrial practices, and
policymaking. Next to education, business creation and innovation, EIT Culture & Creativity has a dedicated area working with such transformation.

This Request for Proposal (RFP) invites research institutions, municipalities, companies and organizations to support the EIT Culture & Creativity with knowledge on one of two interconnected innovation strands:
1. Measuring impact – how can an increase in societal cohesion and environmental resilience driven by cultural practices and creative approaches be observed, recorded and communicated?
2. Activating/enabling/unlocking transdisciplinary collaborations – How can transdisciplinary partnerships (e.g., economists and artists) prototype processes, using cultural practices and creative approaches to transform societal models and systems, in a direction of sustainability and regeneration (e.g. new economic models)?
These strands are mutually reinforcing each other while demonstrating how the interlinked societal and economic value of culture makes it easier to secure sustainable funding and investment.

The goal of this tender is to carry out (artistic) research and harvest evidence on new possible models and practices that foster a sustainable systemic societal transformation driven by culture and creativity. The outputs of this tender will feed into EIT Culture & Creativity’s activities of the Transformation area, but also, education, innovation and business creation areas, as well as contributing to the overall strategic directions
of the EIT Culture & Creativity.

The outputs of the project will provide the EIT Culture & Creativity with knowledge and tools about how to establish future funded actions that:
• engage, through (artistic) research activities, in transdisciplinary dialogues formed by actors among private and public sector, higher education actors, innovation ecosystems, research players, and involved citizens, with the CCSI sector taking the lead.
• are organised in regional settings and in communication with the EIT Culture & Creativity regional hubs (CLCs).
• identify and work on one specific, complex, place-based challenge related to the priority areas identified by the EIT Culture & Creativity Strategic Agenda 2024-2027.
• tackle the impact goals of one or more priority area identified by the EIT Culture & Creativity Strategic Agenda, aligning their objectives with the anticipated impacts per priority area.
By engaging in this tender, the selected service providers will contribute to the broader European discourse on the role of creativity and culture in societal transformation. The results will inform future policies, funding programmes and mechanisms, and governance models to support thriving and resilient cultural and creative ecosystems.
The selected providers will work in synergy with other processes of the Transformation Area as well as the other EIT Culture & Creativity programs. It will serve the EIT Culture & Creativity in fulfilling its long-term strategic objectives and contribute to an increase in social cohesion and resilience.

Applicants for this tender can be:
• Organisations qualified to carry out (artistic) research and applied research activities.
• Organisations that collaborate closely with a local or regional public sector entity.

The service provider must provide visibility on the composition of the team (including any subcontracting) and describe it in the proposal submitted.

Utilising (artistic) research methods and tools, the tenderers will be required to produce forms of evidence that show how creative approaches, and cultural practices can contribute to increased social cohesion and resilience, in relation to place-based societal challenges. This can be done, exploring one or more of the following themes:
• new/experimental forms of governance, promoting transdisciplinary, trans-organisational and trans-sectoral collaboration (e.g. holocractic or teal organisations) suitable for this kind of initiative, promoting inclusive and transformative leadership;
• new/experimental forms of value creation, as well as funding mechanisms;
• new forms of implementation of theories of change and impact assessment;
• new/experimental forms of making use of local spaces and work with experimentation;
• new/experimental forms of communication: how to communicate in between sectors;
• new/experimental transformative practices in policy-making that can be adopted;

• What transformative competences and profiles are necessary to work in these contexts and how can
those competences be trained.

This list is non-exhaustive: the tenderers can also explore other themes that they might deem relevant to carry out to fulfil the task above.