Innovative Cultural Products

Guidelines for Applicants

About the Innovative Cultural Products Call

This call focuses on driving systemic growth across diverse cultural sectors by implementing innovative, cross-disciplinary approaches and integrating modern technology. It supports the adoption of advanced digital tools – such as AR/VR, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics – as well as the introduction of new audience engagement formats tailored to interaction, personalisation, and enriching the cultural experience.

Particular emphasis is placed on inclusivity, sustainable development principles and agile management models and cultural entrepreneurship practices that boost project efficiency. 

The call aims to foster cross-sectoral and cross-border partnerships between Ukrainian and European organisations, stimulate the development of new cultural ecosystems, and scale innovative approaches to creating, distributing, and promoting cultural products to enhance their international competitiveness.

Programme Priorities:

• Digital Transformation: leveraging digital technologies for the creation, distribution, and promotion of cultural products; developing the digital competencies of artists and cultural practitioners; expanding access to cultural experiences through digital solutions; and integrating European best practices in digitisation.
• Sustainable Development and Environmental Responsibility: minimising the environmental footprint of projects, promoting sustainable practices within the cultural sector, and embedding sustainability principles into the core of cultural products.
• Inclusion and Gender Equality: engaging vulnerable and underrepresented groups, ensuring the accessibility of cultural products, and fostering equal opportunities across all project stages, etc. 

Innovative Cultural Products Call Priorities:

• Supporting and scaling contemporary content through digital technologies, cross-media formats, and modern audience engagement tools, while driving the adoption of international best practices. 
• Stimulating transformation across the cultural and creative sectors by introducing cross-disciplinary practices, cultural entrepreneurship, and innovation, rooted in international experience and proven success stories.
• Ensuring accessibility for diverse audiences by enhancing digital availability, localisation, and adaptation for people with disabilities, vulnerable groups, youth, and remote communities, thereby fostering new practices of cultural engagement.
• Promoting Ukrainian cultural products nationally and globally, with an emphasis on cultural diplomacy, cultural mobility, internationalisation, and opening new export channels for creative content.
• Fostering cross-sectoral partnerships among culture, IT, education, urban development, ecology, and the social sphere to build resilient ecosystems and deliver competitive, self-sustaining projects capable of attracting private investment.
• Adapting and integrating best European practices to strengthen international cooperation and enrich the shared cultural space.

Total budget of the call*: 400 000 EUR (19 108 000 UAH)

Minimum grant amount: 10 000 EUR (500 000 UAH)

Maximum grant amount:  20 000 EUR (1 000 000 UAH)

Supported sectors:

• Audio arts
• Audiovisual arts 
• Visual arts
• Cultural heritage
• Cultural and creative industries
• Literature 
• Performing and stage arts 

A combination of several sectors is possible, provided that they complement and reinforce one another by integrating different forms of cultural initiatives into a single coherent concept within the framework of a cross-sectoral project. 

Eligible cultural products under this call include:

• Audio content (podcasts, audio recordings, audiobooks);
• Art objects and installations (sculptures, interactive objects, multimedia, and site-specific installations);
• Exhibitions and expositions;
• Video content (video art, short films, video projects, web formats);
• Arts, crafts, and artisanal products;
• Inclusive cultural products with accessibility features (subtitles, sign language interpretation, audio description, tactile solutions);
• Interactive digital cultural products and platforms;
• Media art and digital art projects;
• Performances (theatrical, choreographic, cross-disciplinary);
• Public art events (screenings, presentations, artistic actions/performances);
• Artisanal and folk art products;
• 3D models and digital visualisations of objects;
• VR/AR art projects.

Output Requirements: Cultural products developed under this call must be created through international partnerships with organisations registered in European Union member states. 

Project ‘Cultural Horizons’ is the result of a collaboration between the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation (Ukraine) and Cultural Vistas gGmbH (Germany). Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

* Please note that the programme budget in UAH may be adjusted upwards or downwards depending on changes in the average monthly accounting exchange rates published on the European Commission’s website (InforEuro), calculated on the date of the decision to open negotiating procedures for projects within the respective call's budget.