It’s important to know one thing: the Kaunas District shares the title European Capital of Culture with the city of Kaunas! Relationships between cities and their surrounding areas are interesting and complicated throughout Europe. And everywhere they’re influenced by culture. This is why listening to the needs of our region was the first task of Kaunas 2022.

Together with the local community, cultural institutions, partners and artists, create sustainable art and culture projects in Kaunas district based on local identity and involving the local community.

The project Contemporary Neighbourhoods is an ongoing creative project developed in Kaunas District, which aims to mobilise and strengthen local communities and foster the cultural sector of Kaunas district. 15 rural areas are participating in the project Contemporary Neighbourhoods. Each of them has been searching for the identifying features of the local community identity with the help of residents of the town or village, various Lithuanian and foreign artists, educational representatives and partners. Contemporary Neighbourhoods is a project that reveals how diverse and unique Kaunas District communities are, but despite the inherent uniqueness of each one, they all together become a prove to Kaunas District’s strength and constant motivation to grow and create favourable conditions for those who live here as well as for those who come to visit.

The Emerald Route is a route of public art objects in Kaunas District, featuring works by Lithuanian and foreign artists created in recent years within the framework of the Kaunas 2022 programme. Around 80 objects, which shine like jewels in unexpected spaces, have transformed the Kaunas District into an exceptional open-air gallery. The Emerald Route presents artistic objects created in 2019–2022: sculptures, installations, contemporary artworks and even old river machinery, transformed into an art gallery or a gastronomy centre. The ideas of Lithuanian and foreign artists created in recent years can now be easily found in nature, town squares and various unexpected spaces.

“Nemuno7” is a river engineering and landscape design project that is unique in Europe. Serving as a public cultural space, the object combines technological history, heritage and contemporary architecture and has become a new attraction point for locals and tourists.

Placed on the left bank of the Nemunas River near the village of Zapyškis, the river dredger is a cultural centre for visual art, media and technology, interdisciplinary collaboration and creativity, and one of the most vibrant accents of the “Kaunas European Capital of Culture 2022” programme. The object is created on a dredger that was constructed in Czechoslovakia and first put in use in 1965. Because of its outdated technology that is harmful for the river ecosystem, the ship could no longer be used for its main purpose. Instead of scrapping it, a more sustainable solution was devised: to preserve the industrial object giving it a new, more relevant role and transforming it into a cultural space that invites the public to explore the subject of water from the perspective of art, history and science.