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Culture is an important part of the society and economy. People tend to evaluate progress through the delivery and survival of cultural artifacts whether that is in tangible terms or through memory of spectacular events. In this way project management has much to offer society. Recent developments highlight how cultural issues in general become necessary for city and community development in order to maintain their attraction as livable places both for citizens and organizations. The variety of cultural activities range from performing and visual arts, music scenes and theaters, to concentrated efforts related to cultural festivals and large-scale Capital of Culture-years including multitudes of artistic expressions. Although it is widely acknowledged that culture matters to society, our understanding of how cultural projects are organized remain under-studied. This lack of knowledge is further emphasized when we consider how core cultural activities are related to creative industries and business development. A wide spectrum of artistic expressions is considered to stimulate co-creation and creativity between different spheres of activities, but the question is how. Despite the complexity of weaving together cultural activities of various types, projects stand out as a common denominator. Organizing by projects energize collaborative actions and provide arenas for creative exploration of the opportunities that lie ahead.

The idea for a special issue on organizing cultural projects was triggered by a research project conducted at Umeå School of Business and Economics concerning the European Capital of Culture initiative in the City of Umeå, Sweden, which was implemented during 2014 (Wåhlin, 2012). We investigated how such a large-scale initiative was organized and planned before, during and after the event and how each phase of the implementation comprised challenges of various kinds. One prominent feature that stood out was the use of projects both when it came to assembling the program in its entirety as well as when it came to energizing small scale initiatives among cultural practitioners (Näsholm and Blomquist, 2015). The tendency of projectification really became obvious and made us aware of a more general trend of organizing cultural activities through projects all over Europe not least stimulated by the European Union (Lundinet al., 2015a). By stretching the boundaries of the normal routines every city seems to strive for turning the conditions of the creative city (Andersson, 2011) into action by empowering and stimulating citizens in co-creative projects. When considering such endeavors we mean that the notion of the projective city seems more appropriate and relevant (APROS/EGOS, 2015).