CCI4Change.
Our Projects/
Creative Collaboration for Energy Transitions: Exploring how culture and creativity can reshape energy behavior.
CCI4Change is an Interreg-funded initiative that brings together public authorities, cultural and creative industries (CCIs), and civil society to explore how artistic and cultural practices can support more sustainable energy use. At its core, the project seeks to reduce energy consumption by addressing one of the most challenging dimensions of the energy transition: human behavior.
At STPLN, we co-lead the implementation of CCI4Change in Region Skåne together with Region Skåne’s Cultural Development Department. Our focus is on unlocking the power of creative collaboration—supporting new models that connect sustainability goals with cultural innovation and citizen engagement.
Why Culture?
Behavioral change around energy is hard to achieve through information alone. Traditional campaigns often fail to connect emotionally or imaginatively. CCI4Change starts from a different place: What if culture could help create new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting around energy consumption?
By fostering collaboration between local authorities and cultural practitioners, the project supports imaginative approaches that resonate with people's daily lives - encouraging reflection, dialogue, and sustainable change.
STPLN’s role in the project
As a creative innovation partner, STPLN contributed project design, creative methods, and close connections to the local CCI ecosystem. Together with Region Skåne, we created a “learning alliance”—a collaborative environment where institutions, creatives, and civil society could co-develop experimental responses to the energy transition.
Region Skåne brought strategic direction and policy anchoring
STPLN offered hands-on facilitation, outreach, and agile project management
From the start, our shared goal was to move beyond standard project delivery and create space for trust-building, experimentation, and mutual learning.
The Local Challenge
In Skåne, rising energy prices and shifting national energy policy affected citizens, businesses, and institutions alike. The local challenge we focused on was how to activate behavioral and attitudinal shifts around energy use in everyday life.
Through a co-designed process, we developed a framework for cultural actors to engage civil society through site-specific, socially grounded interventions. These artistic explorations aimed to inspire reflection and action without prescribing outcomes.
Capacity Building & Open Call
The project supports up to five pilot demonstrations where Cultural and Creative Industry (CCI) actors engage citizens in Skåne (Sweden), Kotka (Finland), and Jurmala (Latvia) through artistic and creative methods.
Two pilot projects were implemented in Skåne, exploring innovative, community-driven approaches to energy consumption.
To support this, STPLN led two capacity-building tracks:
For public sector partners: Focused on building capacity to collaborate with CCIs.
For creatives: Provided training in contract law, budgeting, collaboration, and energy-related themes.
An open call invited proposals emphasizing experimentation and process. STPLN supported applicants with coaching and workshops throughout.
Pilot Projects
Pilot 1: Zero Sum Residency
Location: Ifö Center, Bromölla
Artists/Curators: Edit Szabó, Alexandra Fransson et al.
This pilot involved a summer residency at a repurposed ceramics factory, exploring sustainability, reuse, and alternative energy futures through art and community participation. It included public programs, exhibitions, and lectures, and focused on the artistic reuse of industrial waste. The project also involved the creation of prototype low-energy tea lights and cookers, as well as community engagement around solar energy and storage. The pilot demonstrated how large, underused industrial sites can become cultural and ecological laboratories for rethinking energy.
Pilot 2: On StandBy
Location: Malmö
Artist: Duncan Geere
Website: Loud Numbers - On StandBy
This sound-based artwork was created using real-time household energy data. Seven Malmö homes tracked overnight electricity use with smart plugs, generating an ambient sleep-time soundscape. Real data shaped the rhythm and tone of the audio, and participants' voices offered intimate reflections on the experience. The project was shared online, expanding its reach beyond Malmö.
This poetic sonification of energy data created space for calm reflection on personal energy habits demonstrating how digital art can deepen energy awareness in everyday life.
Final Reflections & A Toolkit for Change
From STPLN’s perspective, CCI4Change has reinforced the importance of several key principles: allowing time for trust-building across sectors with different languages and working rhythms; fostering open, iterative processes that support creative freedom while ensuring accountability; and embracing public institutions as co-learners—enabling experimentation over control.
These insights now feed into the project’s final step: a practical toolkit for reducing energy consumption, co-created with cultural professionals and municipalities. The toolkit offers concrete methods and approaches to support citizen behavioral change and foster collaborative, creative action on sustainability challenges.
In parallel, the project will produce up to five in-depth case studies focused on energy consumption and behavioral change. These will serve as tangible examples of citizen-engaged collaborations, illustrating the real-world potential of creative partnerships in driving sustainability goals.
Project Partners
The CCI4Change project was carried out through the collaboration of several key partners across the Baltic Sea region.
Main partners included: the Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture (lead partner, with its secretariat in Latvia); Jurmala Local Government Administration (Latvia); the City of Kotka (Finland); Region Skåne (Sweden); Cursor Oy – Kotka-Hamina Regional Development Company (Finland); STPLN / Association Stapelbädden (Sweden); and Southeast Finland University of Applied Sciences Ltd (Xamk) (Finland).
Associated partners were the Riga Municipal Agency "Riga Energy Agency" (Latvia) and the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) (Sweden).
CCI4Change will find new ways to reduce energy consumption.
To learn more about the tools, learnings and pilot projects, visit the project website.