Above, the sailing ship ‘Lovis’. Below, the former Soviet sub B-413. Location, the Port of Kaliningrad. The connection is an environmental happening called Moving Baltic Sea, a kind of travelling circus seashow.

Propped by films, fun and festivities, Moving Baltic Sea promotes creative strategies for cultural and environmental co-operation between countries that share the same ecological space.

That the Baltic needs care is not disputed. It’s almost as closed as the Caspian and its waters take 25 - 30 years to refresh. Pollution is all around, whether it is fertilizer landwash from Denmark or sewage from amber mining in Kaliningrad. So the focus of these creative workshops is the need for transnational solutions.

The troupe’s activities are aimed squarely at youth but its message shouldn’t be lost on elders who still can’t find any transnational solution to the problem of Kaliningrad’s borders.

While building understanding, MBS also explodes a few myths. Apolitical NGOs are alive and well in Russia. The project’s Russian events were supported by Ecodefense, The German Russian Exchange and Guide as well as Kaliningrad’s Museum of World Oceans, which provided a lively venue.

As a parcel in the exchange of ideas, Moving Baltic Sea discovered that Kaliningrad isn’t exactly the dark side of the moon. (For good measure, they painted it a few other colours too.) But there remains Kaliningrad’s dark land border in the shadow of the Schengen curtain, which took some project members all night to cross.

By contrast, the team’s ship sailed into Kaliningrad in four hours. Yet pre-Schengen - just three years ago - we could go shopping from Kaliningrad to Gdansk or Klaipeda all in the space of a Saturday afternoon.

In shedding some ’son et lumiere’ on all sorts of issues, in a very nice way, projects like this do a great job. You can follow updates on the Moving Baltic Sea blog.