The aim of this report is to provide a high-level cross-analysis of the current role of CCIs in EU programmes and partnerships. This analysis is based on the findings from nine ekip Policy Labs that have taken place until November 2025. It summarizes the main insights on how CCI actors can participate in EU programmes and partnerships for innovation, what the challenges are and which options for policy action have been formulated with respect to this topic in ekip Policy Labs so far. 

How do the ekip policy labs work?

The ekip policy labs follow a three-step approach to develop evidence-based policy recommendations for the CCIs.

Setting the baseline Each Lab begins with a contextual analysis to understand the specific needs of CCI actors and stakeholders. This phase produces data-driven scoping documents that establish a baseline for each policy area.

Co-formulation phase Stakeholders then take part in dedicated Policy Labs, contributing expertise and insights to shape proposals collaboratively.

Policy recommendations The process concludes with the drafting of prioritised, data-informed policy recommendations outlining concrete actions and prioritiy areas for future implementation.

The ekip open innovation methodology guides this process, using a set of key building blocks to address challenges across CCIs. For the broader creative ecosystems, which are: sustainable competitiveness, regulation and governance, social dimensions, investment and funding, infrastructure, research and innovation, and technological solutions.

Key challenges for CCIs

Difficult access to EU support programmes for innovation

Horizon Europe remains the EU’s flagship programme for research and innovation (R&I). Within this programme, budgets for R&I within and with the CCI have increased compared to Horizon 2020 (e.g. Cluster 2 funding), including some initiatives funded that specifically target (also) CCI actors, such as S+T+ARTS, EIT Culture & Creativity and New European Bauhaus (NEB). 

Yet despite this growth, across several ekip Policy Labs we found that access for the CCI remains very challenging. They relate both to the nature and characteristics of the CCIs and the way that EU innovation policy is shaped: 

• As the large majority of CCI actors are small or even micro-sized organisations, the CCIs often face barriers to participation in Horizon projects. These barriers relate to scale, administrative burden, eligibility criteria or co-funding requirements; 

• There is a persistent bias toward technological rather than cultural or social innovation in Horizon Europe and EU innovation policy in general, meaning that the sector’s full potential within Horizon Europe is still far from realised. Also, specifically related to NEB – the EU initiative that links the CCIs to the green transition – we find that although NEB has helped CCIs join EU-funded green-transition projects, it has a bias towards CCIs closest linked to the built environment (architecture, design, built heritage) and fails to include many other subsectors as full partners, that could play a valuable role in such projects and the green transition in general. 

Creative Europe is the EU’s central programme for supporting the CCI, particularly through networking, mobility, sector development and cross-border cooperation. However, as highlighted across different ekip Policy Labs, its ability to fund research and innovation remains limited. Creative Europe largely supports cultural outputs, capacity-building and sectoral networks (e.g. Europa Nostra, NEMO, IETM, ENCC, CAE, etc.) rather than experimental, cross-sectoral or high-risk innovation work. Its structure and objectives hardly accommodate open innovation, R&I experimentation, or long-term collaborative development involving technology, science, or non-cultural partners. As a result, CCIs seeking to engage in such open innovation, data-driven experimentation, or interdisciplinary R&I often find Creative Europe insufficient, pushing them toward programmes like Horizon Europe where access remains difficult. 

Next to those two main EU programmes for supporting innovation in and with the CCI, some other EU programmes also provide opportunities for funding CCI innovation, such as e.g. Erasmus+ (supporting mobility, skills development, and cross-disciplinary exchanges including with education), the Digital Europe Programme (supporting the digital transformation with a reinforced network of European Digital Innovation Hubs),Interreg and Smart Specialisation Strategies (s3) Interreg is recognised as key for cross-border cultural–territorial collaboration, using heritage or culture as a driver, stimulating e.g. cooperation between public and private partners around heritage, digitisation, green transition and citizen participation. Smart Specialisation (S3) is an EU place‑based policy approach (linked to the ERDF) that enables regions to increase their competitiveness and economic growth by strengthening regional innovation ecosystems. 

CCI actors not (yet) valued as equal innovation partners in R&I ecosystems 

Across the different ekip Policy Labs, several (potential) roles of the CCIs in open innovation ecosystems have been highlighted, such as  

• CCIs as innovation partners (co-creators), where CCIs are considered connectors, enabling cross-sector innovation with technology, health, environment and/or education; 

• CCIs as research & innovation infrastructures, where CCI infrastructures (e.g. culture centres, creative hubs, heritage institutes…) can act as local testbeds for art-science collaborations, citizen science, transformative experimentation on green transition, etc; 

• CCIs as skills and training actors, such as craftspeople that are recognised as innovation skill holders valued for tacit knowledge and frugal innovation, or the role that CCIs can play in developing training for XR, AI; 

• CCIs as social innovation drivers, including heritage-led innovation that is framed as slow, relational, community-rooted innovation. Multiple examples exist of cultural (heritage) organisations acting as “civic platforms” for testing participatory innovation models and driving community participation, civic empowerment, and local resilience. 

• CCIs as awareness builders and (science) communicators supporting major societal transformations, such as the green or digital transition, with e.g. artists shaping public familiarity with immersive tech by designing accessible experiences or CCI actors playing a role in the green transition through methods such as storytelling or enactment. 

However, in R&I collaborations, CCIs are often perceived as add-ons (awareness, communication) in innovation ecosystems and processes, rather than being recognised as innovation actors in their own right or being involved as equal innovation partners. This is re-enforced by the fact that current EU inno

Missing EU-funded support structures for R&I in and with CCIs

Finally, based on the ekip Policy Lab outcomes there appears to be a funding gap in EU innovation support programmes for several essential ingredients that would enable CCIs to participate meaningfully in open innovation ecosystems. These gaps relate to three areas in particular: innovation networks, R&I skills development, and R&I infrastructures: 

• Innovation networks: While some CCI networks receive structural support under Creative Europe, this funding is primarily sector-oriented and does not provide the cross-sector, R&I-driven collaboration needed for open innovation. Creative Europe networks are not designed—or resourced—to connect CCIs with technology, science, education, and industry partners, nor to support prototyping, testing, or experimentation. Funding remains limited, competitive, and largely project-based, preventing long-term ecosystem-building. As a result, CCIs remain weakly connected to major EU innovation frameworks such as Horizon Europe, Digital Europe, EIT initiatives, or mission-driven clusters. 

• R&I skills development: Although several EU programmes address skills gaps in the CCIs, stakeholders signal that current instruments do not yet provide the targeted, cross-sector innovation skills required for meaningful participation in open innovation ecosystems. Erasmus+ remains the core EU programme for skills development. However, it is not designed to systematically build innovation literacy across the CCIs. At the same time, EU programmes such as Horizon Europe, Digital Europe and Creative Europe, integrate skills components into their funding priorities, yet they tend to focus either on technological capabilities or entrepreneurial competences rather than on the interdisciplinary and co-creative skillsets required in open innovation settings. Existing EU skills initiatives thus leave important gaps in digital, entrepreneurial, and innovation literacy. The ekip Policy Labs show that CCI actors and CCI network organisations often lack the skills to navigate EU-funded R&I programmes, collaborate with technology actors, or engage in data-driven and experimental practices. This reduces their ability to engage with innovation systems on an equal footing and limits spillovers between sectors. 

• R&I infrastructures: CCIs lack accessible, dedicated innovation infrastructures—such as living labs, shared spaces, or cross-sector testbeds—because EU funding for R&I facilities remain largely technology-driven and do not reflect cultural or socially embedded modes of innovation. At the same time, the ekip analysis repeatedly shows that existing CCI infrastructures (e.g. cultural heritage institutions, performing arts venues, creative hubs, makerspaces) already function as experimentation environments and civic platforms for co-creation, yet they are not formally recognised or funded as R&I infrastructures. This mismatch prevents them from accessing structural innovation funding and from contributing their full potential to European innovation ecosystems. 

Although initiatives such as S+T+ARTS and EIT Culture & Creativity offer important pathways for cross-sector collaboration with the CCI for innovation, based on the insights from the ekip analysis and Policy Labs we conclude that they can only partially fulfil this role and still leave significant unmet needs: 

1. Their scope is limited relative to the scale of the need 

S+T+ARTS focuses primarily on art–science–technology collaborations, not the full breadth of CCIs. It reaches a small number of beneficiaries (mainly through residencies, prizes, and a limited number of labs) and is not built as an ecosystem-wide instrument. EIT Culture & Creativity on the other hand, is still in its implementation phase, with much of the capacity-building, regional networks, and innovation infrastructure still under development.  

2. They focus on specific types of innovation, not the broader open innovation ecosystem needs 

The support in S+T+ARTS centres on human–tech interfaces and experimental techno-arts collaboration. The programme does not finance long-term cross-sector innovation networks, structural CCI innovation infrastructures, CCI participation in R&I clusters or capacity-building at ecosystem scale. EIT Culture & Creativity on the other hand, has a focus on market creation, competitive innovation, and entrepreneurship, in line with the EIT agenda. It is not well designed to support community-led or social innovation, heritage- or crafts-based innovation, participatory/experimental public-sector innovation, cultural institutions acting as civic or social labs. 

3. They reach only part of the cultural ecosystem 

Many subsectors covered in ekip, heritage, performing arts, crafts, do not regularly interact with S+T+ARTS or EIT Culture & Creativity. These initiatives tend to attract actors who already have experience in innovation/R&I settings, leaving out local organisations, SMEs, micro-enterprises, and socially embedded cultural actors. 

Neither S+T+ARTS nor EIT Culture & Creativity can fully cover the different gaps mentioned earlier, such as the lack of long-term cross-sector networks beyond project-based collaborations, lack of innovation literacy and R&I-skills programmes tailored to CCIs, etc. S+T+ARTS and EIT Culture & Creativity are important instruments, but they cannot substitute for the need for a more structural integration of the CCIs into mainstream EU innovation instruments (Horizon, Digital Europe, Interreg, etc.). 

Preliminary options for policy action 

Based on the outcomes of the ekip Policy Labs so far and the above assessment, the following options for EU policy action emerge: 

• Develop a shared EU vision of CCIs in innovation: different ekip Policy Labs (on heritage, NEB, XR) conclude that the EU needs a coherent innovation vision that acknowledges social, artistic, experiential and community-based approaches as legitimate innovation pathways. Ensure that this perspective is integrated and CCIs are involved in any strategic dialogue or stakeholder consultation on EU innovation strategies. 

• Scale existing success instruments: evaluate to what extent the most effective existing EU instruments for CCIs – Creative Europe, S+T+ARTS, EIT Culture & Creativity, Smart specialisation strategies, Interreg – could be scaled to allow and stimulate structured cross-sector partnerships and address long-term sustainability (beyond short project grants). 

• Ensure better cross-programme alignment: integrate R&I with CCIs more systematically across Horizon, Digital Europe, ERDF, Creative Europe, Erasmus+, NEB. Improve access to existing programmes for (small) CCI actors, not only by adapting eligibility / co-funding requirements so that they can participate, but also by actively promoting their participation. 

• Support CCIs as R&I infrastructures: investigate the (funding) possibilities for cultural institutions, artistic labs, and maker spaces as R&I infrastructures, among others in the structural funds. The work done in the context of the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) can be an inspiration in that respect (see box below and the separate ekip cross-analysis on infrastructures document).  

In terms of ongoing action at European level, the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) represents a major step in the EU’s digital transformation agenda for the cultural sector. Funded under Horizon Europe, this initiative seeks to establish a shared digital infrastructure that interlinks cultural heritage institutions, researchers, and professionals across Europe. Its overarching objective is to enable more cohesive and efficient collaboration on digital cultural assets, ensuring that institutions of all sizes, including smaller and remote ones, can participate equally in the digital transition.  

Through advanced tools for digitisation, preservation, data management and sharing, and research, the ECCCH aims to strengthen the sector’s capacity to document, conserve, and interpret Europe’s cultural heritage in innovative ways. Beyond its technological scope, the Cloud aspires to create a vibrant collaborative ecosystem, fostering interdisciplinary exchange among scholars, curators, conservators, and cultural practitioners. Ultimately, it will provide the foundation for a more connected and resilient cultural heritage landscape, bridging digital divides and enhancing the visibility and accessibility of Europe’s rich cultural assets.