The fourth Exchange of Experience of the project CCSI4CCSI (Cultural and Creative Sectors and Industries for Collaboration, Competitiveness, Sustainability and Innovation) took place in Kortrijk – Belgium from 21st to 23rd of October 2025. During this 3-day programme, the participants (project partners and stakeholders) coming from all the partner regions had the opportunity to get to know the local creative ecosystem, share good practices, work together at a hands-on workshop and finally get inspired by Kortrijk UNESCO Design Region and by WONDER Creativity Festival.
The 1st Day began with a warm welcome and some insights in the Designregio Kortrijk ecosystem by the two organising partners Designregio Kortrijk (DRK) and the City of Kortrijk, followed by an update on the project status by the project Lead Partner (Region of Central Macedonia).
The sharing session of good practices on Green CCSI included presentations by stakeholders coming from the project’s participating regions: “Celebrate Awareness – The UpCycle Project” by Architect Dimitris Kalemis, Soulfood, Thessaloniki Street Food Festival (Central Macedonia); “Business with Purpose: How Humana Nova Transforms Textile Waste into Value” by Karolina Kraljić (Koprivnica); “Vlastic” biomaterial made from flax’s waste stream, by Laura Willems (Kortrijk); : “FutuRE FabLab Małopolska: Co-creating Sustainable Futures through Creativity, Craft and Technology” by Natalia Małecka – FABLAB (Malopolska); “Slow Fashion in a Fast World” by Anne Mette Bjerre Hansen of Amoode (Kolding).
The participants spent their afternoon with a visit in the city of Kortrijk with Peter Tanghe, team City Planning and Development, with design, creativity and architectural highlights.
In the morning of the 2nd Day, the Co-creation workshop “Sustainable business models” was conducted with partners and stakeholders working in teams to develop business models for different creative professionals, following the methodology and the tools provided by the team of facilitators. The afternoon of the same day included a study visit to the Digital Arts & Entertainment school of Howest University and a Curated tour to the WONDER Creativity Festival in different city locations and Budafabriek.
As usual, Day 3 was dedicated to the meeting of the project’s Steering Committee, during which the actions of the third semester were reviewed, issues of preparation and submission of the third progress report were discussed, and the next actions were planned.
After that, the participants had the opportunity to attend the Creativity Summit with inspirational talks on impactful design initiatives by different organisations like Atelier Luma (France) and Veenweide Atelier (Netherlands), Fennigan’s Farms (Detroit), Mogu (Italy).
