Developing Inclusive and Sustainable Creative Economies (DISCE) is a three-year project bringing together researchers from Finland, Italy, Latvia and the UK. Funded by the European Commission, via the Horizon 2020 programme, this research will make a major contribution to understanding creative economies across the EU. Combining ten regional case studies with EU-wide quantitative mapping, the project draws on the team’s highly interdisciplinary expertise. It will investigate the relationships between higher education, skills development and creative work; emerging business models; possibilities for improved quantitative mapping; new ways to understand what the ‘growth’ of creative economies consists of – and why such growth is valuable. At the heart of the project is the question of how the creative economies of the future can be both inclusive and sustainable. Addressing this question, the research will generate new empirical and conceptual insights of value to academics, policy makers and practitioners. Networks of creative practitioners and policy makers will play a vital role in this process, as the aim of DISCE, ultimately, is not only to understand the EU’s creative economies, but to help shape their future.