European Network of Cultural Centres (ENCC)

Activism or advocacy? A toolkit for democratic resilience and representation of culture

Kulturní a kreativní federace
Czech Republic
Open_workshop_Kulturni_a_kreativni_federace
Culture has been under increasing pressure from the radical right populism. Populists all over Europe share their "playbook" on practical ways to restrict the artistic freedom. Therefore, culture also needs to systematically share knowledge for effective advocacy. We propose an international conference with workshops. The panel discussions are for a broader audience to inspire with success stories. The workshops are for advocacy practitioners to share practical know-how.
Advocacy practitioners have rare opportunities to share in depth practical know-how, e.g. how to effectively lobby legislation or to cooperate with local administration. The socio-cultural centres often must learn these practices from scratch by trial and error. As a result, culture is often successful when it comes to activism but falls short when traditional advocacy is needed. Kulturni a kreativni federace (Cultural and Creative Federation) is an umbrella organisation for Czech culture. We aim to empower our members from professional organisations and cultural centres who work with the artistic and local community. To do so we need to share advocacy know-how among the European associations and centres. The core of the project are intense two-day workshops led by international advocacy experts. Final conference is for a broader audience and has two parts. First focuses on inspirational cases, second on ways how the advocacy groups are organised. We prepare a practical toolbox based on conference and workshop. The conference is a loose sequel to the 2025 Lithuanian forum "How to Jump from the Boiling Pot and our goal is to set a regular event traveling across Europe.

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