State of play and future strategies for the culture and creative sectors in the Baltic Sea Region

State of Play

In recent years, public funding for arts and culture in the Nordic and Baltic countries has faced severe budget cuts. This poses a severe threat in the financial stability of the institutions and practitioners and weakens the foundations of the sector.

As funding diminishes, the sector faces growing precarity, loss of talent, and reduced innovation capacity. The lack of support structures is pushing skilled professionals out of the sector. This brain drain depletes institutional memory, disrupts intergenerational knowledge transfer, and weakens the cultural fabric and long-term developments.
The creative sector is known to be fragmented and diverse in its nature, lacking strong advocacy mechanisms. In this increasingly competitive environment of public fundings, the sector’s ability to effectively advocate for its needs becomes more challenged.

Rise of AI has the potential to support the creative sectors and industries increase in its productivity without compromising human touch and authenticity. However, AI also raises challenges around intellectual property rights and threatens the fragile liveli-hoods of artists. This calls for regulation, structural support, and targeted skill-building to help creative professionals address the challenges posed by AI.

Potential solutions

Aligning the sector’s potential with the sustainability transformation

The creative sector is increasingly recognised as a vital contributor to the broader sustainability agenda. It possesses unique capacities to foster dialogue, stimulate crit-ical thinking, and offer imaginative approaches to complex wicked problems. These strengths create opportunities for novel cross-sector collaborations, such as we have seen well adopted in the field of arts & health.

Aligning cultural practices with wider sustainability objectives presents significant po-tential. However, realising this potential requires systemic rethinking: Targeted ca-pacity-building and committed leadership from public institutions to promote innova-tive partnerships and enable funding models to encourage innovative explorations.

Within the creative sector, the field of art has for years operated with an awareness of environmental issues and has often been at the forefront of civic activism. However, the full potential of the sector will be realised when high-volume entertainment industries—such as advertising, marketing, film, and gaming— move to the same direction.

Reassessing role of institutions and the skill needs

As the creative sector evolves in response to societal and economic changes, there is a need to reassess the roles of institutions, and the skills needs of the creative profes-sionals. Cultural institutions are increasingly called upon to support inclusive, demo-cratic practices and have a growing role in their communities – yet the cuts in funding threaten their capacity to fulfil these vital roles effectively.

Education and available training must keep pace with the changing demands of the sector to foster future-ready professionals equipped not only to navigate increasing competitiveness, but able to explore cross-sectoral collaborations and new opportuni-ties of livelihoods.

Diversifying the available funding sources

The sustainability of the creative sectors in the BSR depends heavily on the success of diversifying funding sources beyond traditional public support.

Three potential avenues need to be explored. Firstly, private investments in the crea-tive sector offers significant untapped potential. While public funding remains pivotal, the public sector should pay attention facilitating forward initiatives bridging private investments to the sector. Secondly, private foundations with arts and culture grant programs need to be encouraged to initiate hybrid funding models combining grants with investments and find ways to support cultural entrepreneurship. Thirdly, the sec-tor needs to be acknowledged and supported in the contexts of the development-ori-ented EU-funding instruments. European programmes that support green transitions, regional development and more —such as Interreg programmes —offer valuable oppor-tunities. However, creative actors often lack the capacity to access these resources. With the right support, these barriers can be overcome, enabling the creative sector to contribute more fully to regional development.

Conclusions

The creative sector is navigating a profound time of transformation and while struc-tural changes are significant, so too are the opportunities for renewal.

Transnational exchange is a prerequisite for developing the sector in ways that meet future challenges. In these matters, the BSR countries can learn from each other by exchanging best practices and wisely apply the learnings to their own legislation.

A robust cultural policy framework—rooted in sustainability transformation by cross-sector collaborations, adequate skill-building, innovative funding models, and strong transnational exchange—can anchor the cultural sector in resilience and enhance its growing relevance for the region’s future.

Policy Area Culture Coordinator Comment

The EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region’s Policy Area Culture (PA Culture) translates expert-identified challenges into concrete actions and transnational initiatives that enhance cultural sustainability, resilience, and social cohesion across the region.

The need for climate-conscious cultural practices and sustainable transformation is being addressed through Action 3: Working towards a sustainable culture and a culture of sustainability, which promotes sustainable heritage management and collaboration between cultural and environmental actors.

Funding gaps and evolving skill needs in the cultural and creative sectors (CCS) are tackled through Action 1: Strengthening the Baltic Sea Region cultural and creative sector. A key initiative, platform project (OSI) REAVES, builds cross-sectoral support systems for talent retention and innovation in the audiovisual and media fields.

Policy Area Culture also broadens the concept of regional security to include societal well-being and cultural continuity (soft security). Action 2: Fostering the Baltic Sea Region iden-tity supports initiatives like Arts on Prescription project, which uses cultural partici-pation to improve mental health and social integration. Culture’s role in maintaining social cohesion and democratic values is further supported under Action 2. The BSR Cultural Pearls project helps small and mid-sized municipalities use culture to boost community engagement, identity, and resilience.

In conclusion, investing into culture is investing in regional sustainability and security. The diverse projects and partnerships under its umbrella show how transnational co-operation is not only valuable but necessary to address complex common challenges and build up a resilient Baltic Sea Region. PA Culture proves that cultural policy, when connected to societal and environmental priorities, can secure the future of both com-munities and the region as a whole.

Securing the Future – Views from the Policy Area Coordinators

This text is originally published in the “Securing the Future – Views from the Policy Area Coordinators” publication. The publication consists of thematically focused articles that are aligned with the Strategy objectives. The texts support informed discussion on topics relevant across the Baltic Sea Region.

Download the full publication here.

Experts contributing to this article

Krista Petäjäjärvi, Expert (Arts-Based Innovations) the Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture
Antti Huntus, Head of Unit at the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Member of the Finnish National Commis-sion on Sustainable Development
Magdalena Kleszczewska, Policy Area Coordinator, EUSBSR PA Culture, Adam Mickiewicz Institute
Franziska Kapteina, Policy Area Coordinator, EUSBSR PA Culture, Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Areas, European Affairs and Consumer Protection Schleswig-Holstein
Marcus Hagemann, Director Ars Baltica

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