In 2023, Materahub embarked on an exciting new journey called Collab 4 HY Sust CCI together with four European partners. Funded under the Creative Europe Programme, the project aims to empower Europe’s cultural and creative sectors to grow sustainably, inclusively, and innovatively. One of its key objectives is to highlight the crucial role that CCI incubation processes play in fostering innovation and driving transformative change, both at the local and European levels.
After 16 months of an incubation programme, the grant support of 15 pilot projects (check the report) and multiple formal recognitions of the importance of this work, we decided to speak with Petya Koleva, a long-time expert in the cultural and creative sector, founder of Intercultura Consult, a creative consultancy based in Bulgaria, and most importantly one of the key minds behind Collab!
Hi Petya and thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Shall we start from the project itself? Could you please tell us how the idea for a project like Collab came about, and what specific need it seeks to address?
Yes, thank you for this question! Well, the idea behind Collab was born from observing a clear and persistent gap in cross-innovation practices across the region of Southeast Europe and, more broadly, in many other parts of Europe as well. For over two decades, innovation has been a recurring theme in discussions about the cultural and creative sectors, dating back to the preparation for the European Commission’s Green Paper on Innovation – Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries (2010). However, while the concept has been widely promoted, its practical implementation has often remained limited, fragmented, or confined to isolated initiatives.
What has been clearly missing is a structured, hands-on approach to help cultural and creative professionals experiment with innovation in real and sustainable ways.
In most countries in the South and East of Europe in particular, there are no established programmes that combine incubation and cross-sectoral collaboration — elements that are essential for the long-term growth of the CCI ecosystem. Many professionals in the field still struggle to transform ideas into viable, innovative services due to scarce funding opportunities, a lack of training in innovation management, and limited access to transnational exchange networks.
Collab was designed to bridge exactly this gap. It offers tailored support to CCI professionals, providing them with the tools, methodologies, and networks they need to develop concrete, scalable solutions, proof of concept, first prototypes or processes that can be tested, refined, and replicated by their own organisation and across different European contexts.
Collab is built around two key pillars — cross-collaboration and audience engagement — which appear at the heart of the cross-innovation approach. Could you explain what these concepts mean in practice, and why they were chosen as the foundation of the project?
Absolutely. We identified these two pillars through a survey conducted among potential participants at the very beginning of the developing the blueprint for this project (before applying for EU funding). We didn’t want to define priorities from the top down; instead, we wanted to listen and respond to the real needs and ambitions of the cultural and creative professionals we aimed to support.
Cross-collaboration refers to the exchange of artistic, technological, and entrepreneurial know-how between different sectors. It’s not a fixed or rigid concept, it’s a method, a way of working that treats collaboration itself as a driver of innovation. By connecting teams or organisations who normally wouldn’t have the chance to work together — for example, an artist with a tech developer or a designer with a sustainability expert — Collab creates fertile ground for new ideas, solutions, and processes to emerge.
Audience engagement, on the other hand, is what ensures that innovation remains meaningful, inclusive, and socially relevant. It’s about moving beyond producing for audiences, and instead co-creating with them — involving communities in the creative process, engaging their attention, listening to their input, and responding to the issues that matter to them. Many organisations within Collab started out wanting to explore new ways of engaging audiences and, in doing so, discovered unexpected opportunities for cross-sector collaboration.
Why are these two pillars so important for the sustainability of the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs)?
Because they represent two complementary dimensions of sustainability: one internal and organisational, the other external and societal. Cross-collaboration enhances the resilience of cultural and creative organisations by opening doors to new skills, markets, and perspectives. When professionals from different sectors — say, the arts, technology, business, or education — work together, they diversify their sources of knowledge and revenue. This makes their organisations less vulnerable to crisis and better equipped to adapt to change. In a way, collaboration becomes a strategy for long-term economic and structural sustainability.
Audience engagement, on the other hand, strengthens the social sustainability of the CCIs. It keeps their work relevant and connected to real communities, ensuring that creativity contributes to social cohesion, inclusion, and wellbeing. Engaged audiences become active participants rather than passive consumers, helping to shape the meaning and direction of creative work and ‘’’voting with their fee’’ or today more ‘’ their digital trace’’ that locally culture and creative organisations shape our community.
For example, we never made climate change an explicit focus in Collab — yet many teams naturally gravitated towards sustainability-related challenges. This shows that when cross-collaboration and audience engagement are genuinely practiced, they almost inevitably lead to more sustainable thinking and action.
Sustainability, in this sense, is not just environmental; it’s also organisational, cultural, and human.
Petya, can you tell us what the Collab training journey looked like in practice and what impact it has had on participants?
The Collab pathway was designed as an immersive learning and experimentation journey. Fifteen organisations from across Europe took part in the programme, gaining practical skills in innovation management: a discipline that, despite its relevance, is still rarely taught or practiced within the cultural and creative sectors.
Through a mix of mentoring, peer learning, and hands-on experimentation, participants were guided to move from initial ideas to concrete prototypes and scalable offers.
The process encouraged them not only to think creatively, but also strategically understanding how to structure, test, and sustain their ideas in real-world contexts.
Many of these prototypes/proofs of concept/experimental works went beyond the initial expectations. Several organisations managed to attract new partners and additional funding to further develop their projects. A particularly inspiring example comes from Bulgaria, where one participant combined immersive dance with game design, creating an innovative experience that later received new investment to expand its reach and impact. It’s important to stress that the goal of Collab was never to teach participants how to “sell everything.” Instead, it aimed to help them define a clear, sector-specific offer, one that is both replicable and sustainable within their local context, while maintaining artistic integrity and social value.
How does Collab fit into the broader European cross-innovation landscape?
Recently, cross-innovation has received far more attention and funding in Northern Europe, more than in the South, where public investment in culture is still comparatively limited. This imbalance has often meant that Southern and Southeastern European countries lacked the same opportunities to experiment with collaborative and innovation-driven approaches. However, things are slowly changing.
Collab is emerging as an evidence-based model that demonstrates how cross-innovation can flourish even in less structured or resource-constrained environments.
By combining mentorship, local experimentation, and European cooperation, the project shows that innovation doesn’t depend solely on infrastructure or funding — it also grows from collaboration, creativity, and adaptability.
Through its results, Collab is providing valuable insights for policymakers, proving that with the right framework, creative ecosystems across Europe can engage in meaningful, sustainable innovation. We believe the next step should be to expand funding opportunities at local and regional levels, not just through large European programmes.
Our next step is to develop multiple iterations of presentations and reflections on the model, engaging local administrations and industries to highlight the economic and social value of cross-innovation. In doing so, we aim to inspire, support, and scale new initiatives like Collab, fostering a stronger and more widespread culture of cross-innovation across the continent.
What is your view on the future of cultural innovation in Europe, and what’s next for Collab?
Well, I believe that innovation driven by culture and creativity will be essential for Europe’s future competitiveness , not only within the arts and cultural sectors but across the entire economy.
Unfortunately, current policy frameworks appear to be drifting away from the earlier European vision that closely linked innovation and creativity. It’s crucial to reaffirm that culture and creativity are not merely service providers; they are drivers of meaning, transformation, and social progress. They have the power to address some of our most pressing challenges, from climate change to social cohesion and community resilience.
Moreover, the return on investment in culture is far greater than commonly perceived. While culture accounts for around 4% of Europe’s GDP, its real impact is likely much higher — perhaps exceeding 50% — when we consider the indirect and external benefits it generates, such as innovation spillovers, community wellbeing, and education. It prevents and helps us resolve health, climate, crime or conflict- induced catastrophes that are the costly budget lines. To recognise this fully, we need broader and more inclusive impact evaluation frameworks that can capture the true social, cultural, and economic value of the creative sectors.
As for Collab, we are very proud of what has been achieved so far and of the positive feedback from participants and partners. Our next steps include monitoring the long-term progress of participants, expanding collaborations, and securing additional European funding. The long-term vision is for Collab to evolve into a permanent learning and exchange platform, one that continues to foster sustainable, evidence-based cultural innovation.
Only by building and sharing such models can cross-innovation move from being an exception to becoming a core practice in Europe’s creative landscape.
