Performative arts’ skills for civil society resilience in times of crisis
Mapping the soft skills the arts supply, setting them against what preparedness demands, and teaching the match.
Critical systems fail fast. The response depends on people before it depends on protocols.
Europe’s critical sectors, energy, water and connected systems, fail fast and without warning. When they do, a control engineer, a security analyst and a communications lead have to act together, on partial and contradictory information, while a clock that has already started runs against them.
Formal preparedness answers this with checklists and tabletop exercises, but trains almost none of the human capacities the moment actually calls on.
The untrained layer
Sensemaking, coordination, regulation of fear: the capacities the crisis calls on first are the ones preparedness training leaves out.
Payoff before any crisis
Teams that read each other, regulate stress and decide together are more productive day to day and carry less burnout.
The Culture Compass line
The Culture Compass for Europe ties the arts to resilience, competitiveness and well-being. The project treats the crisis as the sharpest test of skills that matter everywhere.
When a system fails, a handful of people has to carry decisions
The frequency coordinator
A single operator can be handed temporary authority over the whole interconnected network, overriding the automatic controls of every other country to pull the frequency back before the system tears itself apart.
The traffic controller
Has to abandon a signalling system that can no longer be trusted and route trains by hand, on paper, at walking pace.
The security officer
Can shut the facility down, seal it to a single guarded entrance and stop every movement of cargo.
The control-systems engineer
May have to physically unplug the control systems from the company’s ordinary network to stop an intrusion from reaching the machinery.
The security executive
Has to decide, within hours and under personal legal responsibility, what to disclose and to whom, while the state takes command once an incident threatens to spread.
The same role, everywhere
The duty manager when the fleet is grounded, the doctor running the emergency room as casualties arrive, the trading or payments desk when the system seizes, the manager who keeps a company running when a key site goes dark.
Whatever the setting, the moment asks the same of them
- Make sense of a fast, contradictory picture
- Find the nerve to drop a plan that no longer works and act by hand
- Hold together specialists and agencies who do not speak the same language
- Communicate clearly and stay readable to others
- Control their own fear and keep panic out of the room
- Improvise once the procedure runs out
- Take responsibility while everyone is watching
Performing arts train this whole cluster through practice rather than instruction, which is why it transfers as a bundle and not as a single trick. The claim is already partly evidenced by an established literature linking performance practice to decision under stress, from Karl Weick’s sensemaking to Applied Improvisation for disaster readiness.
The call defines artistic intelligence as the integration of creativity with scientific and technological knowledge, and the project takes that literally: performers work alongside cognitive and organisational scientists to articulate and test their own practice. Artists engage with science as co-researchers, not as objects of study.
The project’s core work is to map the soft skills the arts supply, set them against what preparedness demands, and teach the match.
Six pairings, from the literature to the control room
Two strands run in parallel
Research strand, led by the universities
Brings performers and scientists together to map the skills and turn them into a teachable framework, including how they operate inside technology-mediated control settings: real-time data, alarms, dashboards.
Application strand, led by the practice partners
Co-creates the training with the sectors and runs it in the field, inside the real control-room, simulation and real-time-data environments where the sectors operate, with performers delivering it through cascade funding.
Working at the meeting point of performance practice, the science of decision-making and the sectors’ control technology is what makes this an art-science-technology project, not arts training alone.
| WP | Content | Months | Lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| WP1 | Project management and coordination | M1 to M48 | Innogestiona Ambiental (ES), confirmed |
| WP2 | Research mapping the performative soft skills for acting in crisis, including how they operate inside technology-mediated control settings | M2 to M16 | AUA Agricultural University of Athens (EL), confirmed |
| WP3 | Two-sided quali-quantitative analysis: arts and critical-sector surveys and focus groups, set in the sectors’ socio-technical environment and crossed to locate the gap | M4 to M16 | Paris School of Business (FR), confirmed |
| WP4 | Pedagogical framework: how the matched skills can be taught through performance practice, with a trainer accreditation pathway that opens a new professional role for performers | M12 to M22 | Open: university centre in performing-arts pedagogy |
| WP5 | Operational framework, co-created with the sectors: how the matched skills will be taught in the pilots with selected artists, while the artistic method stays with the artists | M16 to M22 | Eutopia (IT), confirmed |
| WP6 | Open call and cascade funding to the artists who deliver the training, through fair, properly paid engagements: residencies and fellowships, EUR 60 000 ceiling per artist | M20 to M24 | Cascade-funding partner, in place |
| WP7 | Coaching of artists, then pilots in critical sectors, run inside real control-room and simulation technology, minimum six months per site, covering both physical and cyber disruption scenarios | M22 to M40 | Fraunhofer EMI (DE), confirmed, with the lead partner and the pilot hosts |
| WP8 | Impact evaluation across decision-maker, team and sector, measuring crisis readiness and the medium-term gains in everyday performance and well-being | M8 to M44 | Impact evaluation partner, under discussion |
| WP9 | Communication and dissemination: white papers, an art-science-technology network linked to SciArt and STARTS, public engagement with citizens, final conference | M2 to M48 | C&D partner, in place |
The consortium we are building
15 partners plus associated partners, across the four large Member States that anchor European preparedness and the front-line countries of the eastern and northern flank: Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic States, together with Greece, Cyprus and Sweden.
Most roles are now filled. One research role is still open, and we are still building the pilot network: if your organisation fits, write to us.
Coordinator and lead partner, WP1
Innogestiona Ambiental (Spain), research and consultancy organisation specialised in security, environment and crisis preparedness, with an extensive Horizon Europe track record. Holds project management, the pilot relationships and the coordination of the field phase.
About the coordination →Research core: crisis and disaster science, WP2
AUA Agricultural University of Athens (Greece). Maps the performative soft skills for acting in crisis, building on its research on crisis and disaster in the energy and food sectors at regional and European level.
About the research core →Research core: business and skills economics, WP3
Paris School of Business (France). Leads the two-sided analysis locating the gap between what crises demand and what preparedness training supplies, and anchors the productivity and competitiveness argument.
About the research core →Research core: performing-arts pedagogy, WP4
A university centre in performing-arts pedagogy, to turn the matched skills into a teachable framework and design the trainer accreditation pathway that opens a new professional role for performers. Conversations are open with academies of music, theatre and culture across the EU.
Join the research core →Technology, security and resilience, WP7
Fraunhofer EMI (Germany). Threat models and scenario realism, assessment of technological shortcomings, technology-switch situations in the pilots, and the organisational layer of the evaluation.
About the technology →Performing-arts European network
EAIPA, European Association of Independent Performing Arts. Mobilises the performers, runs the international focus groups on the arts side and carries the open call to the European performing-arts community.
Bring the performers →Fieldwork: civil society and disinformation
Center for Social Innovation (Cyprus). Brings the civil-response perspective into the scenarios and the bridge towards policy-making bodies.
About the fieldwork →Cascade-funding partner, WP6
An organisation that has managed cascade funding and financial support to third parties across dozens of Horizon projects. Runs the open call and the subgrants: EUR 60 000 ceiling per artist.
About the open call →Impact evaluation partner, WP8
For the three-layer evaluation across decision-maker, team and sector: crisis readiness plus the medium-term gains in everyday performance and well-being.
Design the evaluation →Communication and dissemination partner, WP9
A dissemination specialist experienced across 35+ Horizon projects, with an art-science-technology network connected to SciArt and STARTS, and a route to the policymakers who set preparedness agendas.
About dissemination →Pilot hosts and associated partners
Five pilot settings across the European map: an energy grid operator in Spain, an airport in France as associated partner, a food or water operator in Poland with a technical university, the National Museum of Lithuania for the cultural-heritage sector, and a water-sector pilot in Romania with a research and consulting partner and a port authority. Each pilot runs for a minimum of six months inside the host’s own control-room or simulation environment, covering physical and cyber disruption.
Host a pilot →Joint Research Centre, associated partner
For its SciArt experience and its bridge between research and policy.
About the JRC role →Eutopia, concept promoter, WP5
Research and development laboratory (San Benedetto del Tronto, IT), partner in Creative Europe and Interreg projects. Co-creates the operational framework with the sectors and safeguards the protocol and rules of engagement for the artists, ensuring the artistic method stays with the artists.
Talk to Eutopia →The call, in numbers
| Call | HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-HERITAGE-01, Focus 1: enhancing soft skills through creativity and the arts |
| Action and budget | Research and Innovation Action, Lump Sum. EUR 4.5 to 5.0 million per project |
| Consortium and duration | 15 partners plus associated partners, 48 months |
| Deadline | 23 September 2026, 17:00 Brussels time |