Płock, Poland, hosted the second Cultural Pearls Network Conference on 17–19 September 2025, bringing together the BSR Cultural Pearl cities of 2024 and 2025, 2026 candidate cities, alongside other key stakeholders to strengthen community resilience through culture.

Under the theme “Engage and Activate”, the BSR Cultural Pearls and Resilient Communities Learning Platform (RESCOM) partners held their second joint meeting, uniting cultural actors, policymakers, and community representatives from across the Baltic Sea Region and beyond. Additionally, as part of the RESCOM project, funded by the Swedish Institute, Ukrainian partners from Khmelnytskyi, Okhtyrka, Nova Kakhovka, and Zhovkva contributed valuable perspectives from communities affected by war.

The second RESCOM Learning Lab provided a dynamic platform for exchange between Baltic Sea Region and Ukrainian participants on topics such as community activation and engagement, the role of libraries, and youth inclusion. Participants shared hands-on examples from their hometowns, many linked to the implementation of their Culture and Resilience Action Plans (CuReAPs) — the strategic frameworks that earned them the Cultural Pearl title.

As one of the Cultural Pearls 2025, Płock also showcased its own Culture and Resilience Action Plan (CuReAP) through study visits across the city. Highlights included community theatre and heritage projects that demonstrated how cultural initiatives can foster belonging, togetherness, and local pride.

Active doesn’t mean loud – It means involved

The plenary sessions of the first day of the conference revolved around the topics of community engagement, youth activation and the role of libraries. The plenary quite literally started with opening the doors: From Kaskinen, we heard about the success of the Wooden House and Renovation Fair 2025. Here the doors to private 240-year-old wooden homes were opened to the public, raising interest in the renovation of the small city’s heritage and attracting visitors from near and far.

Gathering a local community around restoration work appears to be an effective way of forming strong bonds and building new skills. In Jāņukalns, the community restoration of an open-air stage attached locals to the place through new positive memories. In Mazsalaca, old buildings have been restored by entrepreneurial local families and used for new small businesses, creating a much-needed town center full of activities. 

In Ukraine, the skill of restoring Nova Kakhovka’s unique traditional panels and stone embroideries is being taught in workshops across Europe. The workshops help to preserve the city’s intangible cultural heritage as 50 historical buildings have already been destroyed by the occupation. The unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine has also changed the role of libraries – in Okhtyrka, a city recovering from mass-bombing, the local library fosters psycho-emotional recovery. The library serves as a hub offering various courses and activities with well-being in mind, which have already attracted over 5000 participants.

A library can also become a truly magical place. Youth in Härnösand can submit their thoughts to the library “book-witch” and receive book recommendations in turn. Not just the book-witches tell tales of the need for youth’s struggles to be heard. In Jakobstad/Pietarsaari, youth can voice their personal struggles, turning them into song lyrics, videos and short films under the project somewhat tellingly titled “Everyone Feels Cr*p”. In Płock, the youth theatre group Grupa Dobrze were given tools to create films by and for teens, putting the lived experience of youth on the silver screen.

Youth have been actively involved across the Cultural Pearls cities. “Snap Cash” in Helsingborg lets youth aged 13-25 get their first contact with cultural professions. The project gives grants to host a cultural event for a local audience. And in Smiltene, young people aged 11-19 helped shape a new public space with the help of an artist. Even if young people are sometimes underrepresented in surveys, their involvement affects the whole community, and their engagement helps the project gain meaning and visibility.

Getting people involved is not a sprint – It’s a marathon

After hearing about cases from all over the Cultural Pearls landscape, we went into groups to reflect on important lessons learned and which issues to tackle.

Even though there are many challenges to getting people involved – bureaucracy, lack of money, disinterest – it’s actually enough to get just 10% involved to begin with. The rest will follow. Making sure that people feel a sense of belonging, and that culture is visible, helps create interest and engagement.

Being a border country creates a lot of unique, complex challenges. Cities are faced with the effects of war, disinformation, and increasing polarization. Therefore, culture, performances and content which unite, instead of divide, can help towards strengthening society against threats. Intangible heritage becomes invaluable – storytelling and crafts are optimal to pass on through our projects, and they are not necessarily intensive on resources.

Aldo-Vargas Tetmajer, architect, urban planner and URBACT coordinator, compared an active, resilient urban community to a snail. While the shell, its house, attracts our immediate attention, it is the snail that is its life, its population. Without the snail carrying the shell on its back, the shell becomes meaningless. The same is true for cities. We support communities, because communities carry the city on their backs.

The frontline of belonging

The second RESCOM Learning Lab opened the lab to representatives of NGOs from Ukraine. The message was clear: Communities, not just territories, are occupied.

Across Ukraine, culture has become survival infrastructure. Culture, from traditional embroidery to art galleries in hospital basements, becomes a way not only to grow, but to live. 

A lab participant, living 100 km from the Ukrainian border, admitted that until now “resilience” was a vague, untranslatable term. 

“After hearing you, I understand. I see resilience not as endurance alone, but as creating, organizing, and dreaming under impossible conditions.”  The exchange ended in an embrace and with a call to treat Ukrainians as peers, not only as aid recipients.