Loneliness, social isolation and cultural passivity are becoming increasingly urgent challenges across Europe. One way in which cities can respond is by incorporating culture and creativity into their urban policies and planning. Indeed, culture reconnects people, transforms neighbourhoods, and reduces loneliness when it is designed with communities, not merely for them.
Reinventing Culture in Urban Places (RECUP) is an URBACT Innovation Transfer Network that builds on Újbuda’s former UIA project CUP4Creativity (Újbuda – XI Budapest District, Lead Partner) and adapts its most effective elements across five diverse contexts: Amersfoort (NL), Bielsko-Biała (PL), Dubrovnik (HR), Mancomunidad de l’Horta Nord (ES), and Sandyford Business District (IE). The shared ambition is simple and bold: make cultural policy an effective instrument for civic belonging, wellbeing, and everyday life.
This first Network Journal covers the initial phase of the RECUP URBACT network, tracing the UNDERSTAND phase and the pivot into ADAPT. We return to the first Core Network Meeting and deep dive in Újbuda, follow the city study visits that informed the Transferability Study, and document the mobilisation of URBACT Local Groups (ULGs) in each place. In the second Core Network Meeting in Mancomunidad de l’Horta Nord, partners crossed from UNDERSTAND to ADAPT, using hands-on tools, such as Testing Action and Investment Plan canvases, governance clinics, anchored by lived examples, from multilingual reading clubs to music schools and climate-adaptive heritage projects. Because culture is made by people and local stories, you’ll also find “Voices from the Stage”, a podcast that gives the microphone to actors shaping change on the ground. In the first episode, architect and urbanist Bálint Köves guides us through Újbuda’s transformation. We close with a concise overview of the methodology and tools that supported this early stage of the RECUP journey.
Enjoy your reading!
Read the full Journal here: https://urbact.eu/sites/default/files/2025-09/RECUP_I_Journal.pdf