Inter Alia’s strategy for Arts and Culture | 2024-2026
The expression of human activity, creativity, and potentiality, concentrated in the concepts of culture and art, is important for Inter Alia in different and interconnected ways. Since its establishment, Inter Alia has been dedicated to the support and promotion of culture and arts through engagements that align with its overall mission and objectives.
The strategy of Inter Alia for the 2024-2026 time period focuses on specific points of intervention and objectives. In specific:
Interconnectedness with the other Fields of Activity
Inter Alia is active in the fields of civic engagement, advocacy, education, and youth work through its “Roots” and “Heart” threads. Our third thread, “Bloom” intersects with the other two either through cultural and creative activities that broach sociopolitical issues, or by using artistic and cultural elements, methods, and manners in order to serve social action, educational, and youth work aims. Inter Alia will continue to blend transdisciplinary activities and ways towards its aims.
Art for Heritage and Heritage for Art
It is often said that the art of today is the heritage of tomorrow. Inter Alia facilitates arts in an attempt to reiterate and enrich heritage. Inter Alia has an almost decade-long history of work on (re)visiting heritage through creative actions so as to reflect on the dynamic character of identities. In the upcoming years, we aspire to explore glocal heritage further and deeper. Since Inter Alia equally values communities and universal ideals, and given that heritage intertwines with identity, we will keep on venturing on expressions of local practices, following clues of communities’ pasts, and tracking the activity of our societies through artistic creation. Inter Alia’s strategy for Arts and Culture will foster explorations of foreign traditions, and opportunities for cultivating understanding of ourselves and the others. Creation of today that is inspired by the past helps us navigate the present and envision the future.
Collective Responsibility and Benefit
Among other things, culture is the knowledge systems shared by a group of people, a community. Inter Alia is dedicated to community-level work and will continue to actively involve them in cultural and artistic activities. Our strategy is to engage communities in shows, training courses, events, and projects that encourage meaningful participation and collaboration. We will creatively approach issues of community interest, and subjects that promote autonomy and empowerment. Given that communities do not exist in isolation, Inter Alia Strategy for Culture and Arts aims to encourage connection, engagement, communication, and co-creation in an international world of shared responsibility, through their interdependence.
Diversity and Inclusion
The exploration of culture and arts brings us face-to-face with ourselves and the others, and nurtures self-reflection and critical thinking. The knowledge that, as humans, we are culturally similar and different at the same time, fosters diversity and inclusion. For the upcoming time period, we will prioritise diversity and inclusion in all aspects of cultural and artistic expression. We will host diverse voices, perspectives, and expressions, we will celebrate richness and variety of communities, and we will include artists, cultural professionals, amateur participants, and audiences in equity. We will build participatory and socially inclusive spaces for cultural interaction and artistic creation.
Digital Transformation
Inter Alia endorses the call for digital culture and arts from 2020. We are also dedicated to offering access to cultural and artistic resources, and at the same time safeguard creative genius and skills. Inter Alia’s strategy for Culture and Arts will continue to support the digitisation of human creation, and will also facilitate open access to creative resources by embracing the digital commons, including open-source digital platforms and technologies to expand the reach and collective use of culture and arts. Digitisation, online exhibitions, virtual events, interactive digital experiences, and people with fewer opportunities will contribute to a more inclusive approach to arts and culture. At the same time, we will critically approach technological advancements that undermine human agency, environmental justice, and global health.
Partnerships and Collaborations
“We stand together” is our motto when it comes to work in the fields of arts and culture. We actively build partnerships and collaborations with cultural organisations, arts institutions, artists and cultural and creative sector (CCS) professionals. We implement our activities always in collaboration with organisations from around the world, we build relations for future action with potential partners that appear in our creative path, and we sustain strong relationships with artists and cultural professionals. In the coming time period we will expand and strengthen our network of artists (the “ECHO network”) and we will build new collaborations with artistic and cultural organisations and institutions. We will also open our activities to project proposals from artists that share our vision, and wish to implement engaging ideas with a priority to local artists. The overall aim of partnership-building and strengthening is to expand the impact of cultural and artistic initiatives, and contribute to a more interconnected cultural ecosystem.
Culture, Arts and Sustainable Living, Cultures of Sustainability
In the face of the multifarious environmental, sociopolitical, economic, and cultural deadends, we will give prominence to the underestimated importance of culture and arts for transforming present woes, and plan viable futures for generations to come. Inter Alia recognises the destructive ecological impact of human activity that relies on extractivism, exploitation of humans, invisible work, and natural resources, on exponential economic growth, and socio-economic inequalities of the past and current mode of living. Therefore, we strategically engage in activities that revisit notions of culture, and engage arts in perceptions and practices that mobilise and inspire slow economic activity, just distribution of resources, non-consumerist well-being, local autonomy and relationships of global responsibility. Inter Alia will pursue the aforementioned aims through art-based research, artistic creation and circulation, art-based advocacy, and community-inspired educational activities.
Education and Learning for and from Culture and Arts
Based on the aims of interconnectedness, intercultural learning and offering opportunities, Inter Alia will develop and join educational programs that enhance cultural awareness and appreciation, and offer culture-based and art-based skill sets and training resources, targeting different target groups within the scope of Inter Alia. Being aware that business models in the CCS are not primarily profit-oriented in their design and development and that this characteristic of theirs often renders them non-viable in terms of income, we aim at offering artists and professionals skills and capabilities that can safeguard their work and strengthen their position in the CCS. Specifically, the strategy for 2024-2026 will enable artistic development and creative opportunities by supporting emerging and young artists through residencies, masterclasses, academies, training courses, and shows. What is more, we will facilitate the professional development of creative talents by offering education and training for increasing employability and income viability of artists and cultural professionals.
Advocacy and Policy Influence
The aforementioned points of intervention and objectives will contribute to advocacy efforts for supporting the arts and cultural sector. We will engage with participatory political processes and connect with EU, national, and local policymakers and other relevant stakeholders, including the communities we will be working with, to ensure that the importance of culture and arts is recognised and adequately supported and target policies on culture and creativity. In particular, we will value local knowledge and needs for cultural sustainability within, however, an internationalised world and culturally intertwined relationships. Art and culture will be also used as tools and media for communicating and supporting additional causes and processes linked with the rest of our Strategies on Education, Youth and Political Engagement. We want to promote and enhance civic action and civil society’s interconnectedness and effectiveness in influencing decision-making at any level for arts and culture, and beyond.
To respond to these entry points and objectives, we are going to mobilise the following targeted actions:
- Work with contested tangible and intangible aspects of heritage and rejuvenate elements of local communities.
- Be critical to narratives that build ethnocentric views and identities, while at the same time, address the relationship between heritage and space through a broader perceptual approach.
- Use participatory approaches offering a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of ecological interactions.
- Foster local autonomy and paneuropean identities through the prioritisation of personal agency and action beyond mere consumerism of culture and art and cultural snacking.
- Provide opportunities to young and emerging artists through art residencies, training courses, masterclasses, and workshops and use participatory art-based methodologies to help them improve their position in the art market.
- Advocate on the ground and through bottom-up activities for inclusive, resilient and sustainable heritage management models that use and involve ecologically, socially, and culturally sustainable practices for local communities in Europe.
- Communicate messages of tolerance, coexistence and inclusion of disempowered groups.
- Promote sustainable practices in arts and culture by encouraging the use of sustainable methodologies, means, tools and materials in cultural and artistic production.
- Cooperate and network among organisations, institutions, creative actors, and community actors on the local, Balkan, European level and beyond.
- Inform our action with global developments and perspectives, and promote global justice in the context of cultural policies and politics.
- Establish feedback mechanisms and tools to continuously learn from artists, communities, and stakeholders to assess the social impact of projects, and adapt strategies for greater impact.