March 1st and 2nd 2018 took place in Seville, Spain the meeting of the research experts. The research is concentrated in revealing solidarity practices in Poland, Spain, Croatia, France and Moldova. Culture for Solidarity is a 2,5 years European project co-financed by Creative Europe programme. Les Têtes de l’Art has been invited to take part of this artistic investigation into root causes of fragmentation in Europe.
The project is piloted by Krytyka Polityczna (Warsaw), in collaboration with ZEMOS98 (Seville) and European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam). The aim is to contribute to more solidarity, by highlighting cultural practices that bring unusual groups of people together, connecting these practices and scaling them across the continent. The project supports a more inclusive cultural sector and offers cross-sectoral solutions to counter polarisation.
WHAT ARE THE OBEJCTIVES OF THE PROJECT?
● Build and disclose a trans-national network of people working with participatory cultural practices .
● New understanding of how collaborative cultural practices create solidarity .
● Advocate for cultural institutions Europe that work ‘with’ their audiences .
● Develop a cross sectoral approach to tackle polarisation.
– Through all the period of the project a public forum – Labs for Europe – an open source online space (platform) for research, debate and campaigning, will allow over a hundred of cultural change makers to discuss about their collaborative cultural practice.
– Seville, March 2018 a preparatory meeting will bring together representatives from the Participatory Action Research teams; the administrators and key researchers associated with Labs for Europe.
– January 2018 – December 2019 in the framework of the Participatory Action Research Labs the partners will explore art and culture as a way of exercising solidarity, mutuality and community bonds. Social solidarity practices will be identified in 5 European contexts Warsaw, Seville, Zagreb, Marseilles, Chisinau.
– Seville, April 2019 – ZEMOS98 will host the Culture for Solidarity Encounter where we will examine how collaborative cultural practices could help institutions to include their audiences in their practices and how the wider public sphere can be improved with more participatory policies and actions.
– Sarajevo, March 2020, European Cultural Foundation will organize Idea Camp – a three-day collaborative working platform that seeks to provide mobility to a myriad of cultural change-makers, and help a European-wide community to emerge that uses the power of culture and creativity to breathe new life into democracy.
– Amsterdam, May 2020 the evaluation meeting will take place.