2025 has marked the beginning of JuST, the new Creative Europe-funded project that will be the backdrop to most of our activities for the next four years.

Animation by Nena Peeters 🖌

Our work on Artificial Intelligence continues. On May 28th, 2025, during the webinar of our working group on digital ethics, we shared our experiences, doubts, frustrations, and feelings about so-called Artificial Intelligence and its use in cultural work. We also discussed the European Commission draft strategy on AI and a possible common statement to publish as part of the related call for vidence.

Sustainability at the Centre is one of two training programmes offered by the Erasmus+ project "FULCRUM: skills development for future-proof socio-cultural centres".

JuST is the project under which most of our core activities will fall in the period between January 2025 and December 2028. Just like CUBE, it is funded by the networks strand of the Creative Europe programme.

On February 10th, we hosted an info session to take you through the different facets of this complex project and give you a rundown of the main activities to be foreseen.

Undertaking successful and sustainable grassroots cultural projects in non-urban areas requires sound awareness of the local context and the cooperation opportunities that it offers, as well as knowledge of where and how to seek funding.

Struggling to retain your audience? How to bring people back? How to reach new audience segments? In the constantly changing cultural landscape, audience development is becoming increasingly important.

Jonathan Goodacre, from UK-based The Audience Agency, discusses this with IG Kultur in the context of the Make it Happen training programme offered by FULCRUM.

FULCRUM: Skills Development for Future-proof Socio-cultural Centres is an EU-co-funded Erasmus+ project designed for the workers and volunteers of socio-cultural centres. Discover more here 👉 https://fulcrum-culture.eu/

In 2024, our flagship training programme on European project writing landed in Malta. The retreat was hosted by our local member Spazju Kreattiv at their stunning premises in the St James Cavalier fortress, at the heart of Valletta.

Incubator 2024 offered participants expert mentoring tailored to their project ideas, networking opportunities with socio-culture professionals from all over Europe, and a rich study visits programme that took them through Valletta's vibrant cultural life. This edition's main focus was on culture in non-urban and peripheral areas.

If you aspire to take your project to the European level, Incubator is the programme for you. Susbscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date about the opening of applications to the next edition.

Find out more this way 👉 https://encc.eu/articles/incubator-2024

On September 20th, our working group on Digital Ethics held an online webinar in the context of the Creative Skills Week 2024.

The meeting was introduced by Cigdem Ozdemircelik, coordinator of the working group, and facilitated by Nancy Von Breska Ficovic, art historian, independent expert on culture for the European Commission, and ethics advisor on digital practices in the cultural field.