As a network of 22 European creative clubs, ADCE is highly committed to the support of the European goals, and we believe that creativity is a driving force to achieve them. That is why we didn’t hesitate to join the European Commission project New European Bauhaus (NEB) as partners.

The New European Bauhaus, announced by President von der Leyen in her 2020 State of the Union address, expresses the EU’s ambition of creating beautiful, sustainable, and inclusive places, products and ways of living. The project invokes the spirit of the Bauhaus because it believes, like the emblematic school, that creativity is a very powerful tool to impact society, and so is effective collaboration across disciplines and geographies. 

However, the project also highlights that invoking the Bauhaus today, in the midst of a declared ecological emergency, involves a new set of challenges. Mainly, that for creativity to be a real driving force, we need to make sure its application doesn’t harm the planet, or better, that it strives to address some of the damage we have caused to natural resources, and push people and organisations to do their best to regenerate them.

The project is part of an ambitious plan to create, together, new policies that accelerate the green transition in various sectors of our economy including design and advertising, which we are proud to represent and promote.

In Spring 2020, we dedicated our Creative Express to generate creative ideas in line with  the New European Bauhaus goals. The results were 9 projects that presented beautiful, sustainable and inclusive ideas and communication strategies that identified and tackled the reduction of CO2 emissions in diverse areas including sports, education, fashion, packaging, food and beverage, personal hygiene, mobility, building and construction and media and entertainment.

We have, however, been exploring how creativity can contribute to regenerate natural resources and create more diverse and inclusive communities for years, not only through our projects but also creating new categories in our Awards. Other examples of this ongoing commitment include the latest editions of our Festival: People for Tomorrow in 2019, Prototyping Brands for a New Era in 2020 and the next one, which will keep addressing these challenges, and we can’t wait to introduce in due time.

These are some examples of how we align with the ethos of the New European Bauhaus project, and we look forward to keep supporting the project’s aims and showing how much European creatives in the field of design and communication can contribute to its goals, especially coming together and sharing resources.