Visions for the Future: third brainstorm

Visions for the Future

Over the last two years, through the Visions for the Future brainstorm cycle, the FULCRUM team has given voice to European socio-cultural practitioners, to document the pressures they face and map the way forward for the sector. What emerged are challenges such as economic instability, precarious labour, burnout and mental health depletion, and an overall societal context marked by polarisation and the resurgence of extremist narratives.

In 2024, the report from the first brainstorm affirmed both the urgency of these pressures and the need to shift from reflection toward concrete, actionable strategies to address them. Then earlier this year, as a result of brainstorm two, participants co-developed an interactive toolkit rooted in field experience and oriented around six recurring challenge clusters: sustainability, polarisation, burnout, bureaucracy, extremist ideologies, and financial instability.

The final chapter

While operating under shrinking and often short-cycle project-based funding, and in the polycrisis scenario described above, European socio-cultural centres are increasingly expected to contribute to broad social goals like cohesion, inclusion, youth engagement, climate justice, and the digital transition.

Building on the learnings and work done so far, it is now time to spotlight what socio-cultural centres already accomplish in contributing to these goals, make their impact visible, and define what policy changes are needed to make their work more sustainable, and their accomplishments scalable. The third and last chapter of the Visions for the Future trajectory will offer a shared space for practitioners to bring forward the activities they carry out that truly make a difference in their communities, connecting their individual experiences to identify common values, evidence, and needs across the field.

Then, drawing from the evidence gathered across all three Visions for the Future brainstorms, we will condense impactful practices, indicators, and enabling conditions into one final output adressed to the policy level. This collective manifesto will articulate our shared values, priorities, and policy demands, and form a tool that all cultural practitioners can use in their advocacy efforts. The output will also be brought to the attention of European policymakers by the ENCC advocacy team during the upcoming negotiations for the European Commission's next Multiannual Financial Framework.

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Is this for me?

The Visions for the Future brainstorms are open to anyone who volunteers or works at/with a cultural or socio-cultural centre that is a member of the FULCRUM networks: ENCC (Europe), ACC (Belgium), SozioKultur (Germany), IG Kultur (Austria), Dire Fare Baciare (Italy), cult! (Belgium), ACCE (Estonia) and ALCC (Latvia).

We welcome anyone who wants to share insights and experiences on their contexts, obstacles and lessons learned, regardless of the size and shape of their organisation. Attendance to the first two brainstorms is not needed in order to join. We invite everyone to make their mark on a collective vision for the future. Your voice should be heard. Come as you are!

All discussions will be in English, in order to facilitate exchanges among peers from different European countries. Interested but hesitating to join? Questions about the brainstorms or accessibility needs? Contact us at fulcrum@encc.eu to learn more.