Creative Circular Cities

Creative Circular Cities (CCC) is a transnational Interreg Baltic Sea Region project in which local authorities, business support organisations and NGOs work across six demo cities, Aarhus, Gdynia, Kiel, Riga, Tallinn and Turku, to show how the cultural and creative sectors and industries can trigger circular business growth and promote circular lifestyles. It runs from 2023 to 2026 and is co-funded by the European Union through the Interreg Baltic Sea Region programme.

The project starts from a clear conviction: the cultural and creative sectors hold knowledge, methods and influence that the circular transition needs. Creatives work in two directions at once. They produce circular solutions, designing products and services around circular principles, and they change how people see circularity, turning it from an abstract policy goal into something visible, local and worth doing. CCC treats culture and creativity as practical tools for system change, not as decoration around it.

In each city, partners develop, test and promote concrete approaches rather than theory. Lifestyle pilots bring citizens into circular practice through festivals, workshops, repair culture and everyday experiments. Incubation programmes help small businesses and creatives build circular business models that can actually hold. Policy work turns what is learned into roadmaps that give cities a credible way to continue once the project closes.

Everything the six cities learn is gathered into a CCC Starter Kit, so other cities in the Baltic Sea Region and beyond can take up the same approach without starting from zero.