Author: Constanze IGBK

Culture Action Europe General Assembly

On 12.06.2020, more than 90 members of Culture Action Europe (CAE) met for a digital General Assembly, for board elections and for agreements on further joint initiatives and priorities in 2020.

The Board reported on activities in 2019 and 2o2o along Culture Action Europe’s strategic goals:

– Advocacy for the culture sector against the background of negotiations of the new EU Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027 (MFF) and in particular for an appropriate recognition of culture in the new “Next Generation EU” instrument and as part of the “REACT-EU” initiative

– Working conditions in the cultural sector in Europe, with particular attention to income conditions and social security for artists

– Freedom of expression and cultural rights, with the aim of drawing up the necessary legal frameworks for this at EU level and in the member states

– Artistic and cultural research, especially the so-called STEAM practices: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics

The role of culture for sustainable living as well as the digital paradigm shift in the cultural sector – also accelerated by COVID19 – emerged as possible new and accompanying focal points in the discussions following the Board’s report.

In view of the COVID19 crisis, Culture Action Europe, together with the European Cultural Foundation, has been mapping measures and emergency initiatives across Europe (compensations, dedicated funding, combined efforts or public and private actors, information sharing etc.) to tackle the effects of the crisis on the arts, culture, creative sectors and cultural heritage.

CAE and its members have addressed political actors at EU and member states level with several letters, on the one hand to clarify how beneficiaries of the Creative Europe programme should currently deal with the challenges posed by COVID19, but also to continue to advocate doubling the budget for Creative Europe in the new MFF.

What this means in figures: Of the 2021-2027 budget for Creative Europe proposed by the EU Commission some time ago, only a smaller amount of 1.5 billion is now included in the current MFF proposal. If this amount were actually doubled, the total budget for Creative Europe 2021-2027 would still not even correspond to 0.4% of the new “Next Generation EU” development instrument!

Simona Neumann (Managing Director of Timisoara 2021 – European Capital of Culture) was re-elected to the Board of Culture Action Europe. Further candidates were Celia Grau (Opera Europa Advocacy Coordinator) and Teemu Mäki (IAA Europe).

More information, the agenda and further summaries of the assembly can soon be found on the  website of Culture Action Europe.

Uphold culture in the EU budget

A call for a central place for culture in the EU long-term recovery budget

Despite its historic relevance, the revised Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF)  proposal presented by the European Commission on 27 May is unambitious for culture. Member States now have the opportunity to show that a forward-looking strategy for the Europe of tomorrow does not leave culture and its ecosystem behind. 

Ahead of the European Council meeting on 19 June, Culture Action Europe and the members of the European Secretariat of German Culture NGOs call on the EU Member States to:

  1. Double the budget of Creative Europe to 2,6 billion euros, as the core programme for reinforcing European cultural cooperation.
  2. Make sure that the additional funds stemming from the Next Generation EU initiative, such as REACT-EU, reach cultural operators.

There will be no real recovery for Europe if culture is left behind.

Read the whole statement here and join with your signature.

EU 2021-2027: call for an adequate budget for culture in funding programmes

In the run-up to the special meeting of the European Council on February 20, 2020 and on the occasion of the #ActforCulture Action Day on February 17, 2020, eight cultural organizations in Germany, coordinated by the European Music Council, made an appeal to Minister of Culture Grütters, Federal Minister of Finance Scholz and Minister of State Roth from the German Federal Foreign Office. The ITI and the IGBK as members of the European Secretariat of German Culture NGOs also signed the call. Continue reading “EU 2021-2027: call for an adequate budget for culture in funding programmes”

“Culture Crops” Report published on CAE-Website

Culture Action Europe has published an extensive report on its 2019 Beyond the Obvious conference “Culture Crops: cultural practices in non-urban territories”, that took place in Konstanz/ Kreuzlingen end of October 2019. Read the full report of the conference on the Culture Action Europe Website here.

The purpose of the Culture Crops conference was to go “Beyond the Obvious”, developing a more comprehensive approach towards culture and cultural and artistic practices in peripheral and non-urban areas. Practically, this included walking the territories, visiting local initiatives and engaging in dialogue with cultural actors from other projects, but with similar challenges from across Europe.

IAA Europe General Assembly in Bratislava

On 23 November 2019, IAA Europe’s 15th General Assembly took place in Bratislava/ Slovakia. As already decided at the General Assembly last year, the Presidency of IAA Europe was handed over to Andrea Kristek Kozárová from the Slovak Union of Visual Artists (SUVA).

The day before the assembly, on 22 November 2019, the conference “Legal and social statutes of artists in Europe – 30 years after the Velvet Revolution: Focus on the Directive (EU) 2019/790 on Copyright in the digital Single Market” was organised by IAA Europe, supported by the Norwegian Collecting Society KOPINOR. National implementations of the so called EU-Digital-Single-Market-Directive were discussed as well as its impact for IAA Europe members from EFAT/EWR countries. The General Assembly adopted a resolution on the implementation of the Directive for an appropriate and proportionate remuneration of visual artists in Europe.

Read the conference program and full text of the resolution on the IAA Europe Website.

“Culture Crops – Cultural Practices in Non-Urban Territories” Culture Action Europe conference

From 23-26 October 2019 the Culture Action Europe Conference „Culture Crops – Cultural Practices in Non-Urban Territories“ took place in Konstanz/Kreuzlingen in the German/ Swiss border region. 170 participants from all over Europe debated on cultural practices in non-urban territories: Where does the rural begin and where does it end? What is the difference between urban visions of the rural and what the rural really is today? How does cultural work in peripheral territories take place and how is it organised?  Find the detailed program of the conference here.

The unusual format, with hikes and visits to cultural sites in Konstanz and Kreuzlingen and the surrounding area – such as Kunstraum Kreuzlingen, the public library and Theater Konstanz, Kartause Ittingen, Transitory Museum of Pfyn, Haus zur Glocke and many more – specifically helped to foster the exchange amongst the cultural actors from all over Europe. Right after the visits, the local hosts discussed challenges in day-to-day work, as well as their questions and wishes to political actors in the European Union, with similar projects from other regions of Europe. Furthermore, an open Project Agora gave space to 26 cultural projects and artists from rural areas all throughout Europe.

The conference participants quickly assembled several theses and demands that were then discussed by the finishing panel, find them here in a first draft:

  • Rural voice should be more heard / represented at EU level. At the same time, there is a need for a stronger exchange of the cultural sector with already existing according institutions, such as the European Committee of the Regions.
  • Generate links between cultural policy and the cohesion policy strands and develop transversal action.
  • In order to create sustainable communities in non urban territories, cultural practices should follow a holistic approach (territorial, cultural, human, economic) that takes into account the autonomy of the community, as well as foster motivation and self-empowerment by being aware of existing local values
  • Adopting and diversifying the EU cultural policy is necessary in terms of issues such as scaling of the program, evaluation criteria capacity building, facilitating application processes to reach the goal of truer territorial equity.
  • Enable and facilitate exchanges, connectivity, knowledge sharing, information access, cultural and creative practices between rural areas across the EU. Issues to be tackled at the EU level:
    • – Gathering of knowledge/data
    • – Preservation/transmission of traditional know how
    • – Trans-sectorality
    • – Long-term actions
    • – Capacity to act from local to global
    • – Efficiency of local policies/ if compares to EU

An elaboration of this debate and other conference outcomes will be published with a Culture Action Europe policy paper and further documentation on the website of Culture Action Europe in the next weeks.