Culture and environment experts from EU countries highlight the key role of the arts in envisioning and creating a more sustainable world.
The report “Creative shifts: empowering culture for sustainable living”, written by culture and environment experts from EU countries, highlights greening practices from the cultural and creative sectors.
Cultural and creative sectors as drivers of systemic change
The cultural and creative sectors, like all sectors and industries, have an impact on the environment, but they are uniquely positioned as drivers of systemic change through storytelling, imagination and behavioural influence.
By highlighting European good practices, this report shows how much the cultural and creative sectors are already doing towards greening their operations: tangible environmental impact is achievable through energy-saving efforts, climate adaptation strategies, circular practices and sustainable mobility initiatives.
However, the cultural and creative sectors, with a remarkably broad range of activities across a diversity of skills, settings and means of expression, encounter varied challenges. Policymakers can support this important sectoral green transition by mobilising guidance, financial support and regulation.
Main recommendations
Main recommendations from the report include
- how to effectively use existing tools and data for informed decision-making
- how to better scale-up existing good practices from the field
- how to best stimulate the CCS through policies and institutional action
- how to amplify knowledge and better sharing successful approaches
- how to mainstream culture into national and EU climate action
About the expert group
Mandated by the EU work plan for culture 2023-2026, the group (under the open method of coordination) composed of culture and environment national experts on “greening the cultural and creative sectors” began its work in April 2024.
Its remit was to recommend how the EU, the Member States and the cultural stakeholders could better support the cultural and creative sectors in their greener environmental performance, while recommending strategic actions that can unlock the potential of culture and the arts for accelerating their contribution to the systemic transformation needed.