Open call for CREA European Cooperation Medium Scale Projects

Objectives

• The action European Cooperation Projects supports projects involving organisations in the cultural and creative sectors of all sizes, including micro-organisations and smallsized organisations, and from different countries to undertake sectoral or crosssectoral activities.
• The action is anchored in the policy framework of the Culture strand of the Creative Europe Programme and its cross-cutting issues (inclusion and diversity notably gender balance as well as greening Creative Europe).
• European Cooperation Projects are open to all the cultural and creative sectors. However, considering that this action aims to pursue the objectives of the Culture strand of the Programme, projects involving exclusively organisations from the audiovisual sector and projects of an exclusive audiovisual content are not targeted for funding under it.
• Support will be given to projects contributing to one of the following objectives:
  • Objective 1 – Transnational creation and circulation:
    • to strengthen the transnational creation and circulation of European works and artists;
    • Transnational creation and circulation is important for the advancement of collaborations, increased outreach and in many cases necessary for the viability and development of cultural organisations, institutions and individuals.
  • Objective 2 – Innovation:
    • to enhance the capacity of European cultural and creative sectors to nurture talents, to innovate, to prosper and to generate jobs and growth.
    • Innovation, in a broad sense, is necessary for the evolution of the cultural and creative sectors and their competitiveness. Innovations can be of technological and artistic nature; they may include the joint creation and production of innovative European works and their dissemination to a wide and diverse audience.

Themes and Priorities

• In addition to choosing one of the objectives referred to above, projects must address at least one (and no more than two) of the following priorities:
  • Audience: to increase access to, engagement and participation in culture and in particular content from countries other than their own-for all types of audience;
  • Social inclusion: to promote societal resilience, including the important role of culture for health and wellbeing (particularly mental health), and to enhance social inclusion in/through culture in particular of/for people with disabilities, people belonging to minorities and people belonging to socially marginalised groups, as well as intercultural dialogue;
  • Sustainability: to co-create, adopt and disseminate environment-friendly practices, as well as to raise awareness on sustainable development through cultural activities, in line with the European Green Deal and the New European Bauhaus;
  • Digital: to help the European cultural and creative sectors to undertake or accelerate their digital transition, and to embrace the opportunities and to address the challenges raised by artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies (e.g., generative AI, big data, virtual worlds, blockchain, NFT, etc.);
  • International dimension: to build the capacity within the European cultural and creative sectors, including grass-roots organisations and micro-organisations, to be active across borders – in Europe and beyond – and to contribute to the development of international cultural relations and the Union’s global strategy for international relations through culture.
  • Annual priority: Support to Ukrainian cultural and creative sectors. With this priority, it is intended to offer an adequate response to the consequences of the war of aggression in Ukraine having devastating effects on the Ukrainian cultural heritage, on cultural organisations as well as artists, which cannot operate and reach out to their national and international audiences.

Funding Information

• The maximum EU grant amount is of EUR 1 000 000 per project.

Duration

• Projects should not normally exceed 48 months.

Expected Impact

• The action European Cooperation Projects fosters transnational cooperation and exchanges between organisations active in the culture field, to increase the European dimension of creation and circulation of European artistic content as well as to encourage the development, experimentation, dissemination or application of new and innovative practices.
• This action is expected to support at least 130 projects.

Eligibility Criteria

• Eligible participants (eligible countries)
  • In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
  • be legal entities (public or private bodies)
  • be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
    • Creative Europe Participating Countries:
      • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
      • non-EU countries:
  • listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Creative Europe Programme or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature
• Specific cases
  • Natural persons — Natural persons are not eligible (with the exception of selfemployed persons, i.e. sole traders, where the company does not have legal personality separate from that of the natural person
  • International organisations — International organisations are eligible. The rules on eligible countries do not apply to them.
  • Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees for the protection of the EU financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons.
  • EU bodies — EU bodies (with the exception of the European Commission Joint Research Centre) cannot be part of the consortium.

For more information, visit EC.