Open Call: EU-Eastern Partnership Culture and Creativity Programme

19/12/2016

The European Union-Eastern Partnership Culture and Creativity Programme is inviting small and medium sized towns in the six Eastern Partnership countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine) to express their interest in piloting Creative Towns and Regions Initiative.

Benefits and Eligibility:

Six selected pilot towns/regions (one in each of EaP country) will become locations for the mapping exercise based on most up-to-date methodology and carried out by qualified experts. As the outcome of the process, the selected towns or regions will receive the following:

analysis of their current cultural and creative resources;
tailor-made roadmap for future development of cultural and creative sectors;
media coverage across the Eastern Partnership region and showcasing good practices from the selected towns/regions;
access to capacity building package for towns/regions' representatives and their communities, opportunity to work with specialized experts;
networking opportunities with international peers in other EaP countries as well from the European Union countries both online and face-to-face.

The call for expressions of interest is open for small and medium sized towns and regions in the Eastern Partnership countries. Since the notion of small and medium sized places is different in different countries, depending on local traditions and size of the total population, the call is open for those municipalities that are not the capital cities of their countries nor major industrial centres with large metropolitan areas. As a recommendation, the size of the applicants should be (depending on the size of the country) from 15,000 to 250,000 people.

How to Apply:

To express interest on behalf of your town or region in becoming the pilot location for the Initiative, please send a Letter of Interest signed by representative of local authority, which includes:

clear motivation why the town/region wants to join the Initiative (up to 1 page);
overview of the status quo in terms of cultural and creative organisations, spaces and activities in the city/region (up to 2 pages);
description of how will the local stakeholders be involved in the process (up to 1 page with names of possible organisations, institutions or experts);
the applicants are encouraged to add links to websites or visual materials (videos, images) to showcase examples of cultural and creative projects, initiatives and urban transformation.

More details and info on how to apply, as well as the addresses of country coordinators, can be found on the project homepage.