Culture-driven social resilience | A practical toolkit & casebook for municipalities to take action

19 / 11 / 2025

The Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture (NDPC) has released a new publication that gives municipalities a clear, practical method for using culture to build stronger, more resilient communities. Culture-Driven Social Resilience: A Practical Toolkit & Casebook for Municipalities to Take Action is part of the Interreg Baltic Sea Region project BSR Cultural Pearls.

Produced by Creative Insights Studio, the publication explains how towns and cities can work systematically with local cultural actors—artists, organisations, community groups—to address social challenges such as declining participation, fragmentation, and lack of trust.

The core of the toolkit is a five-phase process that guides municipalities from preparation to implementation:

Assess local conditions and map the cultural ecosystem.
Identify suitable cultural partners.
Co-design a pilot with community involvement.
Implement and monitor the activities.
Evaluate results and plan next steps.

The message is straightforward: culture is a practical tool for community engagement, not an add-on. Cultural practices help bring people together, create shared experiences, and strengthen a sense of belonging—key elements of social resilience.

A casebook section documents pilot projects across the Baltic Sea Region, including youth-led heritage initiatives in Estonia, a large-scale community mural in Germany, and intergenerational workshops in Latvia. These examples show how even small, well-designed cultural actions can activate residents and build trust between communities and municipal authorities.

Clear language, step-by-step worksheets, and real-world cases make the publication accessible to municipal leaders, cultural officers, and creative practitioners. It offers a ready-to-use starting point for any municipality looking to engage communities more effectively and improve social resilience through culture.