Jette Sandahl, Director of the City Museum of Copenhagen, was key-speaker at the Brussels' debate Negotiating differences - a responsibility of artists and cultural institutions, designed by the ECF and Culture Action Europe, Brussels, April 2, 2008. We wanted to share this speech with you, it raises crucial questions on the role of cultural institutions in a multi cultural Europe / world: "As cultural institutions in Europe, our relationship to the rest of the world is not a blank or clean slate. Not least museums are rooted in the value systems of colonialism and European supremacy, and it requires an often rather painful reorientation and reinterpretation of formative traditions for them to adjust to the current global issues." Read the whole speech

We asked Iryna V., journalist and chief editor of a Belarusian youth magazine, to write an article on the state of arts of the young cultural scene in Belarus. Belarus' Creative Opposition, accompagnied by strong pictures from two Belarusian photgraphers is the result. "Indeed, with its statues of Lenin, KGB, socialist realist buildings and collective farms, time seems to have stopped in Belarus, where the Soviet Union is still alive. But behind the country's closed borders, an exciting and vibrant youth scene is alive and well, producing alternative culture underground in dorms, music clubs, informal groups, artistic communities and cyberspace." READ

At the ECF, we want to explore areas that play a key role on the cultural map. The Mediterranean is one of them. So, together with regional partners we explored the ins and outs of cultural cooperation in the framework of our Mediterranean Reflection Group. The book An alternative gaze is the result. It gives insights in the ins and outs of the cultural sector in the Mediterranean rim. Contributors include Basma El Husseiny, Sofiane Hadjadj, Adila Laida-Hanieh, curator Nat Muller, and Ghislaine Glasson Deschaumes. Read online or contact Susanne Mors if you are interested in receiving a hard copy.

The European Year of Intercultural Dialogue (EYID) 2008 was launched in December 2007. What does this initiative mean for the ECF, how do we see the challenges ahead, how do we respond to the topics at stake? Gottfried Wagner's interview in the online magazine theparliament.com tackles these questions. Read

Note of the editor: the ECF's Stranger Festival is one of the seven selected flagships of the EYID.

Gottfried Wagner, Director of the ECF, assisted at the official opening ceremony in Stavanger(Norway) celebrating the 'Stavanger - Cultural Capital 2008' launch. Mr Wagner shares his personal impressions of this special moment and his reflections about this Cultural Capital on the European cultural map, the inherent dynamics, the meaning for today's Europe.

"12 January 2008, and a crystal clear day welcomes 60 thousand Norwegians on the streets of Stavanger. How can a small city in the ‘Norwegian wood' almost unknown further south in Europe become a landmark on the continent's cultural map?" Read, check the official site of Stavanger and read the flyer from the opening session.

The experience of cultural diversity in Culture Action Europe membership is a research document, trying to tackle the broad and multilayerd topic of Diversity. The ECF commissioned this research with view on our own questionning with respect to this topic inherent to current Europe. Questions as "What external pressures do member organizations find themselves exposed to with respect to diversity?" or "What are the cultural actors' perceptions of the challenges in the field?" and "What kind of projects are in preparation for the EU Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008 and how is this initiative perceived?" are at stake. Read the full document

With our Mobility scheme we want to support and stimulate creative exchange across Europe. We want to enable artistic talents to meet, share, learn amd create. To get an idea of what kind of mobililty projects we support, we want to share with you the travel experiences from some of our 2007 STEPbeyond grantees who travel trough Europe for their professional growth. Read

'Cultural Conflict & Intercultural Dialogue' is the theme that our Bulgarian Forum -to learn more about our Fora, click here- is tackling currently. An in-depth project aiming to contribute to the dialogue and sustainable development through culture in Bulgaria and its neighbours.

Read the paper

On October 7th, 2007, the members of the European Cultural Parliament adopted the so called 'Sibiu-Statements', a strong plee for Intercultural Dialogue. The ECP, an independent, pan European Forum comprising 150 artists and intellectuals from over 40 European countries, is convinced that the intercultural dialogue is the way to a democratic, strong and culturally rich and diverse Europe. Read the 'Sibiu declarations'.

After the ECF's Board meeting in April 2007 in Istanbul, an article by Dr Serhan Ada, Director of santralistanbul -the art & culture centre in Istanbul- , was published in the newspaper Radikal. 'The border of European Culture' looks at the ECF and its activities in the context of a broader diverse Europe and the challenges the European integration process facec. It also questions the role of the cultural sector and sheds a light of the role Turkey could play in this process. Read the English or the Turkish version of the article.

Over half a century ago, when Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain, Czesław Miłosz wrote about the phenomenon of the "enslaving of minds" present in the states of the Soviet bloc, and about the "Hegelian bite", responsible for that. Perceiving history as a process controlled by neither a single person nor communities, led Central and Eastern European "captive minds" to affirmation of the status quo and the ascertainment that - since a different world cannot exist - one has to serve the one at hand. Can our minds be enslaved again even now, when the Iron Curtain and the Soviet bloc are nothing more but the past?
The "Captive Mind Revisited" International Conference organised on the 11th-12th October 2007 in Cracow was an attempt to reflect and discuss these social phenomena which - present in public sphere - should become a subject of deeper interest, not only of academics but also of those individuals and societies who still find the future of the European Union, and its political, economic, social and human dimensions important. Read the resumé of the conference.