Photo: Johan Persson. Project Red Carpet. Inter Arts Center Lund University
In line with the policy recommendations provided by the ekip platform led by Lund University, the European Commission is looking for examples of how creative practices act as catalysts for innovation, whether through new or improved technologies, novel organizational arrangements, fairer social approaches, or new and improved products, processes or services.
Researchers, curators, artists, artist–researchers, professionals in the creative industries, cultural and creative organizations are invited to submit their case study demonstrating how creativity:
Addresses or works across societal, environmental, industrial or technological challenges, for example (but not limited to) emerging technologies, health, climate change and environmental transitions, societal transformations, migration, public governance and democratic resilience.
Contributes to innovation at one or more levels:
Output level: tangible products, services, prototypes or solutions.
Process level: novel methodologies, co-creation formats, participatory approaches or research processes.
System level: shifts in frameworks, governance or infrastructures that shape how innovation occurs.
Case studies can include quantitative or qualitative evidence, or a combination of both.
The deadline for submissions is March 27th, 2026.
Link to more information about eligibility and selection criteria, timeline and submission form.
Idea concept. Light bulb turns on in a woman's head. Modern collage. Creative thinking in business. Scientific discoveries. Successful learning. Brainstorm. Halftone design elements cut from newspaper
ekip, the innovation policy platform for the cultural and creative industries, is now taking on some really burning issues to be addressed in relation to the EU Strategic Agenda and are looking for contributions from all partners. Already some experts from Lund University have been engaged, but there is room for more. This is a great chance to influence future directions in the EU and provide recommendations that have impact on future calls and activities at different levels. The topics are:
The process used in ekip to gather information and develop policy recommendations, the ekip Engine, consists of several coordinated steps and activities involving many people from all over Europe. The work involves participating in workshops and contributing with material. Already some activities have been publicly announced, others are by invitation only.
If you want to contribute and at the same time get access to movers and shakers from other European countries, get in touch with lena.holmberg@fsi.lu.se.
Innovation Takes a Village invites innovation managers, incubators, policy makers, municipal actors, funders, charities, technologists, and creative practitioners to explore this question together.
Hosted as part of ekip’s ongoing Future Forward Hackathons program, the gathering offers an open space for cross-sector imagination and exchange. The program is our method for translating emerging societal, technological, and environmental priorities into forward-looking opportunities for the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs).
Rather than advocating for any one model of innovation, this online hackathon creates one. Through collaboration and playful experimentation in a role-playing game (RPG) style setting, participants will engage in a co-creation challenge aimed at discovering new ways for innovation and cultural perspectives. They will meet, mix, and understand one another in order to tackle societal problems together, tap into each other’s expertise and create meaningful exchange.
Join us to prototype a new narrative for innovation!
This is a major opportunity for higher-education institutions, businesses, research organisations, public or NGO partners across Europe. The call offers up to €2 million per project over 24 months, with a total budget of up to €70 million to accelerate innovation, entrepreneurship and strategic cooperation in the European higher-education ecosystem.
You can apply under two thematic tracks:
Topic 1 – STEM: Build innovation and entrepreneurship capacity in STEM education, launch university-industry partnerships, and strengthen research-to-market structures.
Topic 2 – European Universities alliances (EUAs): Deepen strategic collaboration between European University alliances and the EIT ecosystem, embed entrepreneurship training, and expand cross-border innovation networks.
We encourage you to act quickly: this call represents one of the largest opportunities to boost entrepreneurial and innovation capacity in European higher education. Join us in shaping the next wave of university-driven innovation and impact.
About the EIT Higher Education Initiative
The EIT Higher Education Initiative is the only EU programme fully dedicated to driving innovation in higher education. It connects higher education institutions with industry and supports early-stage innovation through talent development, entrepreneurship training and startup support.
Since 2021, the initiative has supported more than 500 higher education institutions, trained more than 118 000 students and staff, and helped over 2 000 startups and scaleups grow. The initiative is part of the EIT Campus – a coordinated education portfolio designed to train 2.3 million learners by 2028, strengthening Europe’s innovation leadership.
With this new call, the EIT continues to support higher education institutions in collaborating across borders, fostering talent, and boosting Europe’s long-term innovation capacity.
Lund University is investing in establishing new research at Campus Helsingborg on how AI is changing practices for the design and consumption of fashion. This will explore ideas that AI can make work more efficient, democratic, and sustainable, but also concerns that creative work is being left to machines, that design can be driven by sales data and that AI can reinforce normative body ideals. The work will include creating an interdisciplinary network and conducting a pilot study. This initiative is part of the project “Fashioning AI: Human and nonhuman designs” and the portfolio on Fashion & Textile Transformation.
During the last week of October, Politecnico di Milano hosted ekip’s “General Assembly” with many rich conversations on how the extensive material – insights, tools and policy recommendations – by ekip can come into play developing ecosystems that better supports the Cultural and Creative Industries. ekip (The innovation policy platform for the cultural and creative industries) is funded within the framework of Horizon 2030 and is led by Lund University (LU Collaboration). Several workshops addressed the question of how all the material developed through the extensive policy development process can be used in different contexts to support the development of ecosystems across Europe.
The material is extensive and of different nature (posters, articles, reports, videos, cartoons etcetera) in order to be used in so-called “policy journeys” at local, regional, national and EU level. The focus is on open innovation to include the Creatives in ecosystems. Particularly important was the discussion of how the work needs to be adapted to developments within the EU, for example regarding the FP10 and the increased focus on competitiveness, resilience, and sustainability. The cultural and creative sector can play a crucial role in this development, but then the Creatives needs to be included in innovation policies.
The Competitive Compass by the European Commission, sets out a clear agenda: close the innovation gap, decarbonise, reduce dependencies, and create the right conditions for ideas to grow. This is where ekip contributes. We work across Europe to redesign the policies and ecosystems that make innovation possible, and we bring creatives into the early stages of problem-solving and #policy design.
Some of the things we do — our work spans the full innovation cycle:
✔ Policy #recommendations: clear actions to strengthen CCIs within Europe’s innovation systems. ✔ Innovation #portfolios: real-world testing with local stakeholders to see how policy ideas work in practice.
ekip is redesigning the systems that enable innovation, helping Europe turn its creative strength into competitive strength.
Join us in shaping the future of Europe’s innovation ecosystems. 👉 Read about our recommendations here: https://lnkd.in/eU-FhXHs 👉 Read about our innovation portfolios here: https://lnkd.in/e7bkVyAE
At the Green transition hack, 120 participants gathered to hack solutions for the green transition. During two full days they worked on challenges on food systems, mobility, water reuse and making sustainability reporting trustworthy and comparable. Specialist from our partner organisations supported the groups and provided feedback on their ideas.
Alfa Laval, partner for the third year, says “the Green Transition Hack provides a unique opportunity to engage with students who are focusing on some of our most pressing sustainability challenges. It’s a space for meaningful dialogue, inspiration, and learning.”
A new partner for this year, Tata Consultancy services says “We believe that collaboration between industries, startups, and academia is essential to accelerate progress toward net-zero and circular business models. By partnering with this initiative, we aim to empower new ideas, foster cross-disciplinary innovation, and support solutions that make a measurable environmental and societal impact.”
At the end of the event, three teams were selected as winners. Affan Alam, team member in one of the winning teams, said “What truly stood out to me was how people from diverse backgrounds, speaking different languages, and living different lifestyles could come together so effortlessly to collaborate, disagree, co-create, and ultimately succeed.”
This EIT Food-related Winter School is organised by Lund University, University of Oxford and the University of Roskilde. It is part of the EU-project FoSSNet that is dedicated to building a long-lasting pan-European network for Food Systems Science. The winter school offers a collaborative learning experience designed for early-career researchers from academia, industry, and applied research turn their work into real-world solutions for today’s complex food-system challenges.
Through collaboration across diverse perspectives, participants learn to apply systems and entrepreneurial approaches to interrogate evidence, co-design practical options, and translate insights directly into their own research practice.
What skills will you practice?
How to move from research to application – identifying how your work contributes to change
Gain systems-thinking literacy, learning to see problems as part of interconnected food systems
Strengthen your impact and communication skills
Join a European network of peers and mentors committed to sustainable food-system transformation.
Learn more and sign up!
This is an opportunity for PhD candidates, postdocs, and R&D staff with less than 7 years of experience. It is also open for researchers and practioners working on food-systems topics in academia, research institutes, start-ups, public bodies, or industry.
The winter school consists of three weeks of learning from 12-30 January, divided into three thematic weeks. In the first week, the focus is on understanding the food system as a complex network and problem framing. The second week looks at identifying key actors, leverage points and plausible impact pathways. The final and third week concerns how to translate and communicate research for impact, practicing pitching and adjusting your messaging for different audiences.
We had the privilege of representing Lund University at the EIT Food Annual Event “Next Bite” in Brussels in October 2025, a dynamic gathering of experts, innovators, and changemakers shaping the future of the European food sector.
Throughout the event, new insights into the challenges, opportunities, and innovations shaping the European food sector were shared. From inspiring conversations to stimulating sessions, the event refreshed our collaborations, expanded our academic networks, and introduced us to many brilliant minds working toward a more sustainable food system. 🥗🥙🌯🌮
Why now matters We learned that there is an urgent need for a next generation of young and innovative farmers with practical knowledge of sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices. Additionally, to meet EU sustainability goals, public and private collaboration is key. Cellular agriculture and novel fermentation technologies will completely change the game of how we produce food, particularly proteins 🥩🍄, and many exciting innovations are developing in this space.
Thank you EIT Food team at Lund University, for making this experience possible and for the many brilliant people we connected with. We are excited to carry these insights further into our PhD journeys! We leave you with the words of Jack Bobo: “Things are not bad and getting worse. Things are good and getting better…but not fast enough.”
Jennifer Mignonne De Waal and Lena Krautscheid, Doctoral students
ekip is an Innovation Policy Platform for the Cultural and Creative Industries, so in our communication we tend to include “policy” a lot, often in combination with other words. This sometimes leads to confusion, since the concept is rather complex and sometimes used in different ways. Here we try to define some of the more common concepts: policy, policy recommendation, policy area, and policy journey.
“a set of ideas or a plan of what to do in particular situations that has been agreed to officially by a group of people, a business organization, a government, or a political party.”
In the context of ekip, a policy can focus on issues such as what kinds of organizations are allowed to apply for funding (for example, both SMEs and NGOs) or on selection criteria for invitation to participate in programs or activities (for example, >10 employees). They can also regulate tasks allocated to cultural institutions, for example, if museums are encouraged to support innovation or not. A policy can also define how money is distributed for different kinds of activities and if support is made available. In sum, a policy can focus on many things, but the key is that it is something that (a) a group of people decides upon (b) within some kind of organisation, for example, a municipality. There are also different policy domains, such as cultural policies and innovation policies where ekip aims at bridging the two.
VENUE: Campus Bovisa, via Candiani 72, Milan, Italy TIME: October 29th 2025; from 10:00am to 16:00pm CET
This ekip Policy Lab will explore how research and innovation (R&I) policies can support the development and scaling of eco-design practices and DPP implementation in the fashion and textile sectors. Particular attention will be paid to the role of CCIs, SMEs, and local ecosystems in furthering this agenda through collaborative innovation frameworks and inclusive governance models. It will explore key challenges and opportunities for implementation of Ecodesign in Sustainable Products Regulation and Extended Producer responsibility.
In July 2025, a proposal for the EU’s future budget – the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) 2028-2034 was presented. Although it indicates a significant increase in budget for the Culture and Creative Industries and thus a commitment to strengthening culture and values amidst mounting pressures to invest in economic competitiveness and security, there is still reason to look at its associated conceptual framework.
In the article ”AgoraEU: Reframing Culture as a Force for Democracy?” research expert Elena Polivtseva at the Goethe Institute points at many uncertainties with the new budget proposal. For example, on the one hand the proposal emphasises the Culture and Creative Industries (CCI) contribution to the EU’s identity, inclusive and participatory governance, active citizenship, equality, and non-discrimination is recognized, but at the same time[ML1] , the new funding instrument AgoraEU falls under the heading of Competitiveness, prosperity and security. She also points at its lack of an ambitious vision for culture as a driver of the EU’s global role and as a transformative tool for navigating today’s complex geopolitical realities.
Since the budget is still a proposal, it is important to provide decision-makers with policy development support and participate in the debate. Especially since AgoraEU will serve as one of the key tools for implementing the Culture Compass Europe.
Creating a link between research and policy
This discourse is a central target for the policy recommendation work done in the EU flagship [ML2] initiative ekip, led by Lund University. It supports the development of policies that make open innovation into the new standard in ecosystems and drive innovation policy that empowers CCIs to make a significant impact on Europe’s societal, environmental, and economic transformation it. The way that ekip make use of the knowledge co-developed in EU funded projects and initiatives like the EIT Culture & Creativity KIC, creates a link between research and policy development.
“The ekip platform and policy engine can become an important, even central, element in an overarching EU-wide CCSI ecosystem with a focus on pooling and transforming research outputs into policy recommendations and on further nurturing research on and for CCSIs. To this can be added a platform for exchange and cooperation among all kinds of CCSI stakeholders as a nucleus for an emerging culture- and creativity-driven innovation ecosystem. To avoid any constraints on the creation of an EU-wide impact from the budget of EUR 6 million and a project duration of three years, ekip must seek close cooperation and joint structures with other networks, platforms and support initiatives for CCSIs to agree on a common approach and to jointly implement common goals. The way ekip and EIT Culture & Creativity embark on a common approach will be key.” (p. 58)
Do you want to have a role in forming the policies for the next EU budget period? Make sure to join the ekip community!
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