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The 2025 edition of the ENCATC Academy on Sustainable Cultural Management and Policy has officially concluded, marking a transformative week of learning, exchange, and collective vision-setting. Held from 14 to 17 April in the vibrant city of Bologna, the Academy brought together over 35 cultural professionals, researchers, and policymakers from 18 European countries, united by a shared purpose: to explore how the cultural sector can become a driver of sustainable transformation.

Across four days of rich discussion, the Academy made one message abundantly clear: sustainability must be embedded at every level of cultural practice and policy. From institutional strategies to public funding frameworks, from heritage management to artist wellbeing, the sessions offered diverse yet interconnected perspectives on what a sustainable cultural future demands.

The Academy featured contributions from top international experts, each offering distinct insights into how sustainability can be actualized in cultural policy and management.

Beginning with a session on funders’ evolving role, the ENCATC Academy 2025 presented a compelling narrative of how the cultural sector is embracing sustainability not as an afterthought but as a guiding principle. We underscored the shift cultural funders are making from traditional grant-making to becoming agents of ecological transformation, advocating a move from EGO-centric to ECO-centric thinking—prioritizing ecological balance and interconnectedness. Case studies illustrated how cultural foundations and public bodies are integrating climate considerations into their funding structures, even as systemic challenges such as rigid funding models, insufficient resources, and the absence of climate justice strategies persist. 

This theme of integration carried into the session on cultural heritage, where sustainability was framed not as a distant goal but a lived, managerial practice within UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Participants learned that effective heritage sustainability depends on embedding ecological thinking into institutional planning and accountability systems. Without clear indicators and strategic foresight, sustainability efforts risk remaining rhetorical. 

In the session on climate governance and cultural policy, experts drew a direct line from the Brundtland Report to the Paris Agreement, emphasizing the urgency of mainstreaming sustainability into national and global cultural agendas. Drawing on insights from UNESCO’s Re|Shaping Cultural Policies, the conversation revealed both progress and persistent gaps—particularly the need to translate ambitious international frameworks into locally actionable policies. 

We then turned inward, exploring how cultural institutions can initiate sustainability at the organizational level. From action plans to circular economy approaches, participants examined tools to effect meaningful internal change and move beyond greenwashing. Discussions around carbon offsetting and net zero underscored the importance of long-term thinking and structural shifts, with a key insight being that institutions must reflect their sustainability values across all dimensions—from governance to partnerships to daily operations. 

Finally, the Academy spotlighted the often-overlooked role of wellbeing in sustainable development. Drawing on models such as Arts and Health and the Culture For Health initiative, the session advocated for reimagining artists and cultural workers not merely as content providers but as essential contributors to societal resilience and care infrastructures. Ideas like basic income for artists and participatory policy-making emerged as tools to empower cultural professionals as co-creators of inclusive, equitable futures. 

The unifying thread across all sessions was clear: cultural sustainability demands a fundamental rethinking of roles, systems, and priorities. Whether through funding, heritage stewardship, policy alignment, institutional change, or care-centered practices, the sector must move beyond symbolic gestures toward deep, structural transformation that positions culture as both a mirror and a motor of change in a climate-conscious world.