DEN-CuPID is a Strategic Partnership between SMEs, academic institutions and Local Authorities associations, which aims primarily at improving transversal competencies, such as entrepreneurship and managerial skills, and at enhancing knowledge of people active professionally or voluntarily in the field of cultural management. It envisages the optimization of local capacities in designing and implementing projects based on the local cultural endowment, as well as the ability to involve financial and funding tools, particularly innovative ones, for the accomplishment of these projects. Culture is a rather ill-funded field nowadays, and thus the need for fostering innovation in this field is even more urgent, in order for local societies to be able to turn cultural heritage and cultural activity to a lever of sustainable development. Such change is also hindered by an actual mismatch in the training background of people working in the field of culture and the actual need for innovative approaches and projects. DEN-CuPID aims to address these issues by developing an innovative education and networking platform and a training course comprising a dual-learning approach, to ensure the prolonged development of skills throughout the working life of people, and to better match transversal competencies with the actual demands, in alignment with the 2020 agenda for new skills and jobs. At the same time, DEN-CuPID approach is very well compatible with fast-developing Local and Regional branding processes. Therefore, the project’s results and good practices are expected to stimulate, enhance, and be incorporated into a broader strategy developed by local and regional authorities towards Local and Regional branding, which could break through existing restrictions of sector-oriented approaches to localized development.