Tallinn is already recognized as one of Europe's leading start-up hubs. Through the European project Creative Circular Cities (CCC), the city has spent the past three years exploring frameworks where the entrepreneurial mindset can be transferred to the cultural and creative sectors, helping professionals turn circular economy principles into practical business skills.
Across Europe, the cultural and creative industries employ around 8 million people and generate almost 4% of the EU's economic value, yet the businesses driving this sector are, most often, small and medium-sized enterprises. Estonia's own creative industries mirror this picture at a smaller scale: over 10,700 creative enterprises and organisations employ around 28,000 people and generate €1.86 billion in annual revenue, accounting for roughly 2.6% of GDP, according to the latest full mapping.
With a sector this size relying on small, resource-constrained businesses, developing sustainable products, services and business models becomes a practical need.
Between February and April 2026, Tallinn Business Incubator, one of the local partners of Creative Circular Cities, launched a series of practical training modules that equipped 500 entrepreneurs, designers, visual artists, creative start-ups and students with the tools to integrate circular thinking into their professional practice.
The sessions were built around five questions, each tackling different aspects of the relationship between sustainability, visibility, and the creative sector:
- How to Design a Sustainable Product?
- How to Design a Sustainable Service?
- How to Tell Stories That Build Trust and Action?
- How to Present and Stand Out as an International Visual Artist?
- How to Build Your Brand for International Markets?
Led by internationally awarded designer and strategist Maximilian Mauracher, with contributions from Margot Samel, Estonian-born gallerist and art dealer based in New York, Kadi-Ell Tähiste, Lilian Hiob-Küttis, and Kadri Laas-Lepasepp, international contemporary art expert, the capacity-building programme offered Estonian and international artists and cultural professionals a more comprehensive understanding of sustainability and circularity as values that are actively embedded in their work and professional identity.
"The creative industries are an important lever for the transformation of our economy and society towards circularity. The design of products, services and how we communicate is critical for the adoption of new behaviours – turning abstract sustainability goals into something people recognise, believe, and want to be part of", says Maximilian Mauracher.
Monika Pärnsalu, Tallinn Business Incubator's consultant and creative sector's project manager of Tallinn Business Incubator, further explains: "For creative entrepreneurs, circularity can be seen as an opportunity to innovate. It encourages new ways of designing products, delivering services and communicating value, while building stronger relationships with customers who increasingly expect transparency and responsibility. These are practical skills that creative professionals can carry into every stage of their work."
Tallinn's programme speaks to something larger than the sessions themselves. The city’s start-up ecosystem can already provide the tools and structures needed for circular solutions to be developed and tested across different contexts. With Creative Circular Cities, that opportunity moves beyond the business sector, bringing creative industries into the conversation and exploring how circular thinking can shape the quality, competitiveness and long-term viability of creative work. Tallinn's involvement in CCC positions the city as fertile ground for the existing landscape to support artists and creative businesses that are now exploring and building around the idea of circular thinking.
These experiences are echoed across the six municipalities involved in the Interreg – Baltic Sea Region project: Tallinn, Aarhus, Gdynia, Kiel, Riga, and Turku. Taken together, they reinforce the project's core premise: that circular solutions designed through cross-sectoral collaborations can change the working ecosystem in the long run.
The main objective of Creative Circular Cities is to bring these learnings into a series of toolkits and policy recommendations that would allow different municipalities to experiment in their own contexts, bridging existing gaps between local authorities, artists, businesses and the civil society. The project’s invitation is rather straight-forward: to turn circularity into a practice that becomes embedded within organisational models, local policies, and social action.
Creative Circular Cities (CCC) is a transnational project co-funded by the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme and the European Union. The project explores how culture and the creative industries can help cities move from linear consumption to circular lifestyles. Across six Baltic Sea Region cities,Tallinn, Aarhus, Gdynia, Kiel, Riga, and Turku, CCC develops and tests tools, models and local activities that connect circular economy with creativity, citizen engagement, business development and policymaking.
In Tallinn, CCC is implemented with the support of Tallinn Business Incubator.
