Culture. Climate. Exchange.

Purpose

Culture. Climate. Exchange empowers young people to move from eco-anxiety to action by linking cultural history, nature awareness, and regenerative thinking. The project strengthens cultural institutions as democratic spaces for youth engagement and develops scalable methods that connect local stories to global climate solutions.

About this page

This page documents the development of Culture. Climate. Exchange and gathers the project’s purpose, partners, methods and activities in one place.

The site is continuously updated as new insights, tools and milestones are developed. It follows the project as it unfolds — from research and workshops to final outcomes.

This project is funded and supported by

Culture. Climate. Exchange is funded by the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces (Slots- og Kulturstyrelsen) under the Ministry of Culture and the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The project is co-financed by all the project partners.

Partners

Denmark

As a cultural history museum with sustainability as a strategic development priority, Mark | Museum of a New Danish History brings strong professional competencies within its historical responsibility areas: agriculture, industry, and tourism. The museum has extensive experience in raising awareness and fostering understanding of complex societal challenges, and in communicating these in engaging and accessible ways. A particular strength lies in connecting past, present, and future perspectives — demonstrating how historical developments shape current realities and inform future possibilities.

Mark has high expertise in co-creation methodologies. The museum has invested in staff training and has built a substantial and well-documented body of experience working with participatory and collaborative approaches. Co-creation at Mark is not an add-on activity but a core methodological framework grounded in dialogue, trust, mutual respect, and the recognition of children’s and young people’s perspectives, experiences, and competencies.

Through co-creative processes, participants are given space to explore and articulate their thoughts and emotions through creative expression. This approach provides a constructive channel for processing for example climate concerns while contributing actively to broader sustainability narratives. By stimulating innovative and creative thinking, Mark´s users are encouraged to imagine and develop new solutions, fostering a sense of agency, hope, and optimism also in relation to climate challenges.

By creating platforms where people can share their ideas, projects, and initiatives, Mark strengthens their sense of empowerment and demonstrates that their voices and actions matter in shaping more sustainable futures. In this way, the museum operates not only as a cultural institution but as an active democratic actor and facilitator of meaningful societal engagement.

Earthways

We offer regenerative learning modules to help educators, facilitators, leaders and practitioners across civil society, education, and purpose-driven organizations build capacity to navigate and respond to social and ecological change.

In a world shaped by growing uncertainty and systemic disruption, the central challenge is no longer control or prediction, but orientation: how to remain grounded, responsive, and connected within living systems in transformation. This calls for a fundamental rethinking of how we learn, lead, and organize our lives – so that we can reduce our ecological impact while enhancing wellbeing, resilience, and collective agency.

At EarthWays, we work with regenerative principles and practices to cultivate the capacities required for this transition. Through our Learning Journeys, participants engage with regenerative methods – understood as practices that restore, renew, and strengthen the ability of ecological and social systems to evolve and thrive – as concrete pathways for aligning ways of living, learning, and working with the conditions that sustain life on Earth.

Our invitation is not to learn about regeneration, but to engage in regeneration as an embodied experiential practice that develops relational and collective intelligence and supports responsible action in complex and changing contexts.

Latvia

The memorial museum of the poet Eduards Veidenbaums, opened in 1958, introduces visitors to the life, poetry, and ideas of E. Veidenbaums, and invites them to explore life on a 19th-century rural homestead.

The museum is open from May to October. Visitors can see the exhibition “More Light!”, an exhibition of old chests and work tools, the contemporary art exhibition “Atkalāčojums,” and an outdoor exhibition telling the story of life at “Kalāči” in the 19th century.

The museum’s main target audience is young people. School programs are offered that help students get to know the poet’s personality and poetry, while also developing creativity, strengthening social skills, and providing opportunities to think and talk about mental health. The museum has its own youth community of young people aged 13 to 25. With the museum’s support, the youth group organizes an annual festival of art, literature, and music. The museum is eager to experiment with unconventional forms of cultural and poetry events.

In the project Culture. Climate. Exchange, together with students, we will create a new museum program that focuses on the interaction between nature and culture, and draws attention to nature and the environment.

Lithuania

Markuciai Manor

Markučiai Manor (formerly the Markučiai Manor Museum, the Alexander Pushkin Literary Museum) is a branch of the Vilnius City Museum, housed in the main residential building on the historic Markučiai estate. Nestling in a park, the building is a good example of 19th-century wooden architecture and interior design. Markučiai Manor seeks to dissociate itself from the legacy of the Alexander Pushkin Museum, which was established in Soviet times, and focuses on the controversial legacy of the Russian Empire in Vilnius. The estate consists of a house and an 18-hectare park, complete with ponds, a chapel dedicated to St Barbara, and a small family graveyard beside the chapel. Inside the house are six well-preserved rooms dating from the late 19th-century. Markučiai Manor works together with the communities of Markučiai and Ribiškės, as well as the Markučiai Day Centre, and often provides a space for their events. Alongside regular educational activities and tours, Markučiai Manor hosts various exhibitions, lectures and gatherings.

Urban games and research

Laimikis.lt (NGO) is a Lithuania-based Laboratory for Urban Games and Research that specialises in co-creating vibrant public spaces through games, cultural routes, community arts and non-formal learning. As cultural innovators, we develop creative methodologies (including games and routes for World Heritage sites and European Capital of Culture opening events) to advance the cultural regeneration of neighbourhoods, towns, and villages, strengthen local networks, and cultivate a strong sense of place. Within the Climate Culture Exchange, Laimikis was instrumental in establishing a local partnership between the Markučiai Manor Museum and Save the Children and in laying the foundation for a new regenerative learning programme to be hosted by the Museum. We contribute to the development of participatory methods that link climate awareness, cultural heritage, and place-based education.

Gelbekit vaikus

Save the children, Lithuania

Council of the Baltic Sea States

Member States and the EU High Representative, is the primary decision-making body of the CBSS. It fosters political dialogue and cooperation, sets strategic priorities, and provides direction for regional initiatives aligned with the organisation's long-term priorities.

What will happen?

Through co-creative workshops and facilitated community-building activities, young participants will explore climate change in relation to their local natural environments and cultural history. The activities will actively foster engagement at local, national, and international levels, creating opportunities for collaboration and dialogue across borders.

Throughout the process, the partnership will identify and analyse young people’s perceptions of climate, sustainability, nature, and cultural institutions. The project will measure impact through before-and-after data to assess changes in attitudes, awareness, and engagement.

Based on these experiences, the consortium will develop hybrid, cross-disciplinary methods and scalable tools that integrate cultural history, regenerative thinking, and climate action. These tools will enable cultural institutions to continue fostering youth empowerment, participation, and meaningful climate engagement beyond the lifetime of the project.

Ultimately, the project aims not only to increase understanding, but to inspire concrete action and strengthen young people’s sense of agency as active contributors to more sustainable futures.

Masterclasses and taskforce

To strengthen the methodological consistency and cross-partner learning the project includes three dedicated masterclasses. With specialised expertise in regenerative learning and co-creation methodologies, EarthWays and Mark | Museum of a New Danish History form the core of the project taskforce. The taskforce acknowledges and integrates the specific strengths, professional competencies, and local cultural contexts of each case partner.

Via the masterclasses Mark and EarthWays will engage in close dialogue with each case partner to co-design workshops focusing on regenerative learning and co-creation processes. These workshops will be adapted to local conditions while maintaining a shared methodological framework.

The three masterclasses will serve as shared learning platforms within the partnership, ensuring knowledge exchange, methodological alignment, and capacity building across countries.

Masterclass 1: Co-Creation & Context

Introduction to framework and perception of nature: Exploring regenerative approaches.

Introduction to co-creation: Ethics and practice – perspectives from Mark and EarthWays.

Masterclass 1: Co-creation & context (opens YouTube in a new tab)

Masterclass 2: Methods & Design

Exploration of selected methods for local cases.

Presentation of selected methods: Co-creation, regenerative learning, cultural-historical anchoring.

Introduction to method design: Adapting tools to different target groups and local contexts.

Masterclass 2: Methods & Design (opens YouTube in a new tab)

Masterclass 3: Facilitation & Scaling

Sharing experiences from facilitation and work on scaling methods.

Transformative effects: Reflections on impact and change.

Scaling methods: How to adapt approaches across different settings.

Shared experiences: How to handle emotional responses, open and close processes.

Video soon to be released on youtube.

Pre-study

The project contains a pre-study. Its purpose is to establish a shared analytical foundation across partners before designing workshops, interviews, and local case projects.

The pre-study combines mapping and youth segmentation: identifying where and how to best recruit young people, and defining youth types and motivations based on participation patterns rather than demographics.

It examines the conditions that shape engagement, including trust, agency, access, capacity, and lived experience.

By clarifying what must be understood before action begins, the pre-study functions as a design filter. It ensures that recruitment, interviews, and workshops are grounded, comparable, and meaningful across contexts.

Kickoff-conference

The two-day event marked the project’s transnational collaboration. It brought together the project's partners to establish a shared understanding of the project’s purpose, method and ambitions.

The programme introduced the findings from the pre-study, presented the partner cases, and outlined the co-creation and regenerative learning approach that would guide the local processes in each country. Through keynotes, dialogue and hands-on sessions, the conference created space for alignment, exchange and concrete planning.

The kickoff conference was where the partnership set its direction and built the collaborative foundation for the next phase of the project.

The Concluding Seminar

See the full streaming of the seminar on youtube.

The study was organised by

• Mark | Museum for a New Danish History
• Cēsis Museum

As part of the international project Culture. Climate. Exchange

Project partners

• Mark | Museum for a New Danish History (Denmark)
• Earthways (Denmark)
• Laimikis.lt (Lithuania)
• E. Veidenbauma Memorial Museum "Kalāči" (Latvia)
• Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS)

Contributing partners

• Vilnius Museum – Markučiai Manor (Lithuania)
• Save the Children Lithuania
• Cēsis Museum (Latvia)
• Danish Cultural Institute in Riga (Baltic states)

Supported by

• Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark
• Ministry of Culture of Denmark

The Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces under the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark

Special thanks to

• All participating children and young people
• Participating schools and educational institutions
• Participating museums
• Teachers, educators and social workers
• Local communities and experts