BSR Cultural Pearls

The BSR Cultural Pearls project helps smaller cities and regions in the Baltic Sea Region to become more attractive and improve their quality of life by engaging people in cultural activities and developing a stronger sense of community.

Through the INTERREG project BSR Cultural Pearls, smaller and medium-sized cities and regions can increase their social resilience through local resources in an innovative way. The project addresses challenges, such as the decline in quality of life, faced by city and municipal governments and their relevant departments. They often lack capacity, innovative solutions and tools to stop this downward spiral. This is the problem that the project addresses. The Heinrich Böll Foundation SH, together with 11 project partners, is developing a cultural and social resilience programme with three key elements from January 2023 to December 2025: 

1. Development of an action plan for culture and resilience by city and municipal governments.
2. Supporting city and municipal governments in implementing these action plans through a peer mentoring/co-learning programme.
3. Making selected cities and regions visible as "Baltic Sea cultural pearls" with supra-regional communication activities.

As a result, places should be created where citizens and stakeholders feel a stronger sense of belonging to society, get involved and act for the common good. In this way, the community becomes more attractive and better prepared to respond to external disturbances. Such a city or region can be described as more resilient.