CREA-UP has closed. The project ran for 20 months under Creative Europe, coordinated by Les Créatives de Demain in Nice, together with the European Development Institute in Brussels, Creative Random Universe in Porto and Green Muse in Rheine.
The subject was upcycling in art and design. Not as a theme for a campaign, but as a working method. What has to change in a studio, in a budget and in a schedule before reusing, repairing and repurposing stop being the exception and become the ordinary way of working.
What we did in Germany
Green Muse ran the German side of the project. In spring 2025 we hosted the working lab in Berlin, open to applications, where participants worked directly on material rather than on presentations. A co creation session followed, built on what came out of the lab.
In June 2025 the results were shown in an exhibition in Berlin, together with work from the other partners.
What came out of it
A set of sustainability guides for artists, designers and makers, and a platform bringing the material of all four partners together. Both are available at creaup.org.
What stayed with us was less the guides than the format itself. A room, a pile of material that somebody was about to throw away, and people who make things for a living. Nobody needed to be convinced of anything. The material did the convincing, usually by turning out to be something other than what everyone assumed.
That format is the one we have kept running since the project ended.
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