A call to invest in all our creative futures

Republished by ECBN from: IETM

Prior to the latest European Council meeting that took place on 17-18 July, 45 leading European cultural figures issued a call for the EU to “be bold and to invest in culture and the arts, to invest in all our creative futures.” This is a direct response to the European Commission’s latest proposal to reduce the Creative Europe programme’s budget to €1.5 billion, in comparison to the €1.8 billion they had initially proposed in May 2018.

European culture is in the midst of a crisis. How decision-makers choose to respond now will set the scene for the next decade of cultural and creative life in our union. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, theatres, cinemas, music halls, museums and other venues of cultural expression have remained closed. Many of those venues will simply not reopen. The result has been to squeeze the life out of the cultural and creative sectors, exacerbating the desperately perilous situation in which culture, the arts and the creative sectors at large find themselves. Cultural and creative sectors are Europe’s third largest employer. Meaning the economic consequences of a stagnant sector have reached far beyond the realm of culture. But, despite such a diminished cultural landscape, it is to culture that we have all turned during this time of great personal and societal adversity. 

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