Project STARTUP - “Sustainable Transitions: Action, Research and Training in Urban Perspective” highlights the critical role of cultural heritage (CH) and the cultural creative industries (CCIs) in socio-economic, post-crisis recovery and their potential to drive the transition towards a beautiful, inclusive, sustainable environment. These principles align with the New European Bauhaus’ (NEB) core values, which seek to engage citizens, institutions, and creative individuals as thinkers and change-makers in shaping for a better future.

The project develops placemaking paradigm by the concept of urban living labs in which the bottom-up, small-scale and place-based solutions responding to current challenges capitalize and develop potential of local communities and their cultural values - local cultural praesidia. In eight small-scale trials, placemaking approaches based on culture and creativity will be developed,v tested and refined. Cultural mapping and comparative case study research will further promote the knowledge base for such interventions. The trials, mappings and case studies will form the empirical underpinnings of analyses of sustainable architectural design, multi-level policy and governance, and social, economic and environmental impacts (positive and negative) of culture-driven placemaking. These analyses, in turn, will form the evidence-base for STARTUP’s final results and main outcome: a “European Creative Placemaking Framework”, which is the policy-option STARTUP will innovate.

The approach of the framework builds upon local actors in culture and creativity, and aims at strengthening these actors as well as local authorities, in building their future on the tangible and intangible cultural resources represented in the place. The framework, which aims to be a world-leading management tool, hereby supports local economic development, sustainability, social cohesion and identity across Europe, but based on local cultural and creative professionals engaged in their art.