What is a creathon?

Creathons are ‘creative marathons’ and are best described as interactive workshops that bring together talented students and young professionals. Participants come from different personal, professional and educational backgrounds and work together to deliver innovative solutions, projects or prototypes related to a pre-formulated topic. Click here for more information about our previous creathons.

 

Cross-Creathon Maastricht-Lille 2022

Throughout the years, the regions around Lille and Maastricht have transitioned from industrial to post-industrial economies. Both cities have seen their industries, textiles in Lille and coal in Maastricht, close or convert to other activities. This development coincides with ongoing public investment to strengthen the circular economy in these regions.

The Dutch government has an ambitious target to achieve a circular economy by 2050, and France has issued a roadmap to accelerate its transition into a circular economy by 2025. Additionally, both the Lille region and Maastricht share a border with Belgium, a country that is continuously experimenting with coordination mechanisms between the federal and regional governments in areas such as climate change, water resources management, waste management and circular economies.

Citizen engagement has the potential to facilitate and stimulate circular thinking and thus promote waste reduction and sustainable consumption habits. These can lead to new services, sharing economies and longer product lifecycles. Therefore, the participants of the Cross-Creathon Maastricht-Lille will work on creating concrete, transferable solutions to encourage and enable citizen participation in cross-border circular economies.

 

Partners

The Cross-Creathon Maastricht Lille 2022 is organised by the Lille European Metropolis, Studio Europa Maastricht, the French-Dutch Network for research and higher education, the Institut français des Pays-Bas, the Embassy of France in Belgium and Nuffic, the Dutch organisation for the internationalisation of education.

University of Lille in France and Howest University of Applied Sciences in Kortrijk, Belgium are involved as partner organisations.