we are more is a Europe-wide arts advocacy campaign set up by Culture Action Europe in strategic partnership with the European Cultural Foundation.
The Culture programme: a tool for arts and culture to experiment with new models, increase sustainability and solidarity, open up shared European spaces, and enhance arts and culture’s contribution to European development
The Culture Programme is the only instrument of the European Union exclusively dedicated to support arts and culture. During its 10 years of existence as a unified tool, it has supported a vast number of key initiatives that have both contributed to the development of the sector, and of its co-operations across Europe and beyond. It has also allowed for the testing out and development of the arts and culture vision of Europe, and for the sharing and experimentation of this vision with numerous partners, and with hundreds of thousands of Europeans across our territories and beyond.
The Culture programme has also demonstrated weaknesses that need to be corrected. Its very limited budget has not allowed for the development of a genuine critical mass of projects that could irrigate through our societies in a constructive and sustainable way. Even with the significant progress in its design and implementation rules over the last years, it is still not fully accessible to all relevant stakeholders – allowing added value to existing initiatives and triggering new dynamics and ideas. It lacks finally a clear and coherent rationale that would permit a full use of its resources, and an enhanced visibility and usability of its outcomes.
At the time the European Union and its Member States are launching the new Europe 2020 strategy, and as public investment is being questioned and reviewed in terms of sustainable development and fair growth, a EU support scheme for arts and culture is even more relevant.
The European Union and its member States have today to invest in instruments that nourish a vision of our societies that values arts and culture, individual and collective development, that strengthens cohesion, solidarity, and active citizenship, and that experiment with new models of development. European societies are rich in their diversity and in their capacity to project collective and fair societal visions.
As we are witnessing across Europe dangerous nationalist and xenophobic trends, investing in all instruments that open up new spaces of co-operations, public debates, and collective constructions are indispensable. Arts and culture are one of those key spaces that have to be nurtured if the European Union wants to continue defending the key values and principles that have made the strength of our common endeavour for more than 60 years.
The next Culture Programme will therefore have to be bold, aligned with the overall strategy launched by the European Agenda for Culture, and embedded in the overall vision of sustainable and inclusive growth outlined by the Europe 2020 strategy. Its objectives will have to be refocused, its design and management improved, and its budget increased.
This position paper puts forward the proposal of the we are more campaign for the new Culture Programme. It has been prepared by Culture Action Europe following extensive discussions and consultations with its members and partners.