The Spanish partners of CreaSus, Fundación Banco Santander and Zabala Innovation, recently celebrated the national event of CreaSus in Madrid. The event was planned as a space for dialogue between cultural and creative organizations and public and private bodies to address the real-world challenges of integrating sustainability into the cultural and creative sectors and present some preliminary results of the project. The hybrid event successfully brought together over 70 professionals and cultural organizations from all across the country, ensuring that the knowledge generated achieves the widest possible impact.
Redefining Sustainability: Beyond Carbon Footprints
One of the core pillars of the encounter, highlighted during the opening keynote by Paula Ráez (Head of Sustainability at Gabeiras y Asociados and member of CreaSus Advisory Board), was the urgent need to understand sustainability in a transversal way. The ecological transition cannot be decoupled from social justice; there is no environmental justice without social equity. True sustainability must balance environmental, economic, and social pillars, allowing the cultural sector to build resilient management models that are fit for the future.
The cultural sector must acknowledge that its activities generate negative externalities and that mitigating them requires a transformation of organizational models. However, as debated in the roundtables, standard corporate frameworks (such as the European CSRD directive or ESRS metrics) are designed for large industrial corporations and do not fit the reality of a cultural fabric made up mostly of micro-enterprises. This is precisely why Project Creasus was born: to co-design specific, realistic indicators tailored to the sector.
Pilot Results: Where Do Cultural Organizations Stand?
The conference served as the platform to present the aggregated results of the pilot phase, where 62 European organizations completed the Creasus sustainability self-assessment tool. Developed between 2023 and September 2026 (when the final closing event will take place in Brussels), the project adopts a readiness approach. Instead of demanding difficult-to-reach quantitative data (like exact litres of water consumed), the tool evaluates whether the organization actually measures its consumption, has improvement processes in place, and utilizes data to make decisions.
The pilot data revealed clear trends:
- Strengths: Cultural organizations score highest in the social dimension, particularly in gender equality, work-life balance, and ethical governance. In the environmental sphere, the best practices are concentrated in open-air event management and waste prevention.
- Weaknesses: The Achilles’ heel lies in monitoring and reporting. Very few entities actively measure the real impact of their waste recycling, water consumption, or report systematically under international standards.
- Main Barriers: While 89% of participants plan to implement sustainable actions, the primary barrier identified is a lack of human resources and specific training, ranking even ahead of financial restrictions. Furthermore, there is a structural problem of “agency”: many festivals or theatre companies operate in municipal or historic buildings they do not own, limiting their capacity to directly manage energy efficiency.
Less Bureaucracy, More Precise Measurement Tools
The open debate highlighted a growing sense of “eco-anxiety” within the sector due to a lack of clear criteria. Currently, public subsidies and private grants require alignment with the “2030 Agenda,” but the lack of rigorous metrics means these justifications often turn into generic texts generated by artificial intelligence, rather than translating into real operational change.
To correct this, it is urgent that both public institutions (such as the Ministry of Culture, currently working on its 2025-2030 Cultural Rights Plan) and private entities unify and simplify reporting tools. At Fundación Banco Santander, we maintain that funders have an obligation to provide the sector with accessible methodologies. However, we also demand a firm commitment from cultural agents to train themselves and measure their impact rigorously. Likewise, it is crucial that future funding lines include specific budgets for technical assistance to allow for the hiring of specialized sustainability professionals.
Practical Inspiration: A Technical Visit to Teatro Real
The encounter concluded with a technical visit to the Teatro Real de Madrid, an institution which stands as a beacon of leadership in the sector. Despite the immense complexities of managing a historic building, it has achieved top-tier environmental certifications and was recognized as the most sustainable theatre in the world in 2025. Their experience proves that the ecological transition is entirely possible, even for institutions of the largest scale and highest technical complexity.
The road to full sustainability is long, but CreaSus resources appeared practical tools for cultural and creative organizations to move forward step by step, realistically and rigorously. See you this September in Brussels for the final project closing event!
