KNOWLEDGE GATHERING
We have developed a ‘reflect, recommend, lobby and act' approach to dealing with major European cultural issues. Our aim is to spark public debate and influence policymakers. The first ECF Reflection Group was convened in 2002, two years before the Enlargement of the European Union, with the aim of reflecting on the broad topic of `Europe as a cultural project´. The reflection process has continued since then, although with a more tightly focused agenda and shorter time-frame.
In 2005 we invited a number of cultural experts - most of them representatives of a new generation of artists that has emerged in the Balkans following years of devastating conflict - to form a Balkan Reflection Group. The Group met twice to consider the part played by the contemporary arts before and during the crises in the Balkans, and to explore the potential of the arts to bring reconciliation and progress.
The recommendations made by the Balkan Reflection Group, at the conference `The Heart of the Matter´in the Hague (1 December 2005), seek to bring the Balkans out of the shadows of their stigmatising role as ‘Europe's Other', placing them instead firmly on the path towards peaceful co-existence and European integration.
Between 2006 and 2008, the ECF engaged in the Mediterranean Reflection Group. The group explored the political and artistic challenges of cooperative projects among practitioners from Europe, Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa. Following this process, we are currently supporting the mapping, analysis and publication of the state of cultural policies in 8 Arab Mediterranean countries, also in relation to international cultural cooperation policies. In cooperation with Culture Resource Cairo, British Council, Doen Foundation and Boekman Foundation.
In the spring and summer of 2007, a reflection process focusing on the EU's eastern borders was convened: The ECF, together with the German Marshall for the United States (GMF) invited Cultural Actors of Change in Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova to share their knowledge. In the first phase of the process, the East European Reflection Group mapped individual forces and dynamics in the cultural field that have already contributed or have the potential to contribute to societal changes. Changes in this context are understood as processes contributing positively to democratization, modernization and Europeanization in the countries under analysis.