Felix Schartner Giertta is the project manager for BSR Cultural Pearls and the new SI-funded project RESCOM. Both projects aim to build resilience among local populations through culture.
– It is important that resilience is seen as more than just crisis preparedness. It’s about how a community can be equipped as a whole to overcome challenges. Basic elements like trust, social relationships, and democratic participation matter as to how a population faces the crises and challenges it encounters. Culture, in the broadest sense, has proven to be a good tool to strengthen trust and a sense of belonging among a population.
Through the RESCOM project, Ukrainian, Swedish, and Moldovan local authorities are brought together with their counterparts in the Baltic Sea region to exchange experiences. This will take place in a roundtable format to help strengthen the resilience of the population.
– Two main aspects came into play when we wrote the application for RESCOM. On one hand, we felt early on with BSR Cultural Pearls that we wanted to support Ukraine, and on the other hand, we also realized that they have a lot to teach us. RESCOM can rely on BSR Cultural Pearls because there is a stable partnership of relevant actors and a large platform that is interested in strengthening its local population. At the same time, BSR Cultural Pearls gains entirely new perspectives thanks to the RESCOM project.
BSR Cultural Pearls is a project co-funded by the Interreg Baltic Sea Region programme, in which municipalities around the Baltic Sea develop action plans for social resilience while gaining access to mentors, experts, and materials on how they can work with culture and participation. The four municipalities with the best action plans are designated as “pearls” for one year. As a pearl, you receive international exposure, ongoing support from the project and support to work with cultural and creative professionals in implementing your action plan. New pearls are chosen each year, and the pearls for 2024 are Svendborg (Denmark), Kiel (Germany), Jakobstad (Finland), and RĹ«jiena (Latvia). During the title year, the pearls hold various events together, and in connection with these, RESCOM will be able to conduct activities.
– The idea is to join forces with what already exists. The RESCOM project has access to the materials and webinars that the competing municipalities can take part in. The ambition is that networks of cities working on resilience will emerge, stretching from Ukraine to the Baltic Sea. RESCOM also builds on so-called roundtable discussions and will try to schedule these events during the Pearls events to achieve synergies and offer more people the opportunity to participate. The conclusions will be compiled in a publication.
According to Felix Schartner Giertta, the possibility of Third Country Cooperation is a very good way to utilize existing and shared resources:
– I often feel that there is too much focus on innovation and new ways to solve old problems rather than taking advantage of what is already being done in projects. Third Country Cooperation is a way to address this issue and to look at our shared resources—how can we reach more people, include other perspectives, and connect more countries to achieve even more? It’s a smart use of resources.
SI has also played a central role in the development of BSR Cultural Pearls, according to Felix Schartner Giertta.
– BSR Cultural Pearls has its origins in the BSCC project funded by SI. That project was crucial for us to be where we are today and for the development of BSR Cultural Pearls, and now also for the opportunity to include partners from Ukraine and Moldova in the joint work.
– In the near future, we will participate in the Annual Forum of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region in Visby, October 29-31. Among other things, we will organise a workshop where we will talk about resilience and how to combine a somewhat harder civil defence concept with a softer resilience concept. Our Ukrainian project partners will also be present in Visby.
Elena Kolosova, senior advisor for external cooperation, Interreg Baltic Sea Region programme, expressed her enthusiasm for the programme’s projects and their impact on regional cooperation:
– We’re incredibly proud of projects like BSR Cultural Pearls, which bring cities and towns across the Baltic Sea region together as if there were no borders. This project makes our region stronger by fortifying social connections that can support individuals and communities during difficult times. While Interreg Baltic Sea Region doesn’t offer specific funding for Ukrainian organisations, we’re actively exploring ways to involve them, recognising the immense potential for collaboration. With support from the SI funding, our project partners are well-equipped to expand their efforts into Ukraine, creating valuable connections that benefit both the Baltic Sea region and our Ukrainian counterparts. The new RESCOM project is a prime example of how Interreg Baltic Sea Region project partners can leverage their experience to support Ukraine while also broadening their own perspectives.
Facts:
The RESCOM project has been granted funding within the SI Baltic Sea Neighbourhood Programme under the grant type cooperation projects. The purpose of this grant type is to deepen and develop cooperation through activities such as building networks and platforms, developing methods and models, providing policy input, and spreading knowledge. Projects applying under this grant type and originating from an ongoing EU-funded project with a Baltic Sea regional partnership can include the programme countries outside the EU. This arrangement, which involves cooperation with ongoing EU projects, is called Third Country Cooperation, which is the arrangement used by the RESCOM project. This is just one of several possible ways to structure a partnership and the country constellation within the grant type cooperation. A call will be launched towards the end of November 2024.