

95% of attendees agreed that, while the crisis requires creative solutions and visionary approaches, it also presents an unprecedented opportunity to change the status quo. On the financial and technical level, the Deal should mean the creation of a strong mechanism to heal the cultural ecosystem post-pandemic, as well as mainstreaming cultural policies as a priority dimension in the EU policy thinking and funds-allocation.Ī remarkable feature of the discussion was the consistency of the messages repeated by all the stakeholders. On the political level, the Cultural Deal for Europe aims at acknowledging the contribution of the sector to the European project, in particular by reconsidering the social and legal status of artists and cultural professionals but also by going beyond the sectoral perspective and including cultural approaches and voices in the main strategic EU programmes and policies, as well as in the Conference on the Future of Europe. We need poetics but also politics, because in culture they should go hand-in-hand ,” said Tere Badia, Secretary General of Culture Action Europe. We should make common pleads in order to address the lack of centrality of cultural perspectives in the European project which should be a cultural project above all. “ Now it is time to combine creative thinking and effective actions. “It is through culture that we can advance the European project,” French Secretary of State Clément Beaune stressed during the event.īeyond the aesthetic contribution of culture and the arts to societies, however, the cultural sector claims its political space too.

According to President Sassoli, culture and the arts bring beauty and “poetics”, a creative force that animates us and allows us to live. The President of the European Parliament David Sassoli opened the event, echoing the call of the sector: “(We need to) think(…) of culture as a pivot for recovery, in particular for the green and digital transition but also as the social cement of a post-Covid world that needs to be rebuilt,” – he said. The Cultural Deal for Europe was first launched on 18 November 2020, during a high-profile online debate with more than 500 attendees. It eyes the immediate recovery of our societies with the ambition to build a new paradigm for designing the Future of Europe. It bundles together both short-term and long-term perspectives. In a joint statement, published by Culture Action Europe, (CAE), European Cultural Foundation (ECF), and Europa Nostra (also in its capacity as the coordinator of the European Heritage Alliance), the European community of cultural, creative, heritage and philanthropic sectors call to mainstream culture across all policy fields to fully realise its potential for the European project: from the green transition to Europe’s geopolitical ambition, and from the digital shift to a value-driven Union. A Cultural Deal for Europe is a call from a wider European cultural community to acknowledge the pivotal role of culture in shaping the future of our lives.

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The gravity of the Covid-19 crisis proved again that culture is not a luxury, but a necessity to build cohesive, equal, sustainable and free societies.

It is at the basis of the European project and determines the future of our societies. The European cultural ecosystem is convinced that Europe needs a new Cultural Deal, a transversal, overarching framework that should demonstrate the EU’s political commitment to place culture at the heart of the European project.Ĭulture is what brings us together. There is no recovery or future for Europe without culture.
