News

As the global community looks beyond 2030, the intersection of culture and sustainable development takes on renewed urgency. At ENCATC, we believe cultural and arts education holds transformative potential—not only for the cultural and creative sectors but for society as a whole.

Regenerative futures require more than sustainability: they demand systems thinking, empathy, and the capacity to imagine alternatives. These are not only technical skills, but civic and ethical competencies - cultivated through deep engagement with culture and creativity. Education in the arts, culture, and creative sectors fosters emotional literacy, critical reflection, and a sense of interconnectedness - essential for addressing today’s challenges, from social fragmentation to climate change. It helps societies reassess and reshape their relationships with one another and with the more-than-human world.

Transformative learning, as championed by theorists like Paulo Freire and Jack Mezirow, integrates heart, mind, and action. ENCATC and its members are at the forefront of embedding these approaches in higher education, professional training, and non-formal learning. We support pedagogies that go beyond disciplinary boundaries - connecting cultural rights with digital innovation, artistic freedom with ecological awareness, and management training with care ethics.

This kind of learning is not merely the transmission of knowledge, but the co-creation of meaning and capacity through social learning. ENCATC has the potential to evolve even more intentionally as a social learning space - where diverse members and networks come together to address complex challenges, exchange insights, and build shared practices. Drawing on the work of Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, social learning spaces are formed when people care to make a difference, engage at the edge of their certainty, and pay close attention to each other’s responses. This dynamic process supports agency, trust, and the emergence of new ways of thinking and doing.

At ENCATC, we co-shape shared professional identities and collective practices across boundaries, we form a constellation of communities of practice. Many of us already operate as systems conveners - bridging disciplines, institutions, and geographies. Our Congress and focus groups exemplify the richness of this engagement, particularly in how we connect the cultural management and policy education field to global debates such as MONDIACULT 2025.

We must now go further. As a network rooted in Europe but globally connected, ENCATC can more intentionally become a trusted platform for horizontal collaboration among networks - facilitating mutual learning, innovation, and solidarity. Through its engagement with AAAE, TACPS, and ASEF, ENCATC has shown it is an inclusive social learning space, where other networks are co-learners in the pursuit of shared futures.

This vision supports the development of regenerative cultural policy - a policy approach grounded in the co-creative, caring, and reflexive values of cultural relations and social learning. It challenges the extractive models that have long shaped our institutions and instead focuses on creating conditions where imagination and justice can flourish. A regenerative approach moves beyond sustaining the status quo. It aims to heal, reimagine, and co-design futures that are good for both people and planet.

As we contribute to MONDIACULT 2025 and to the development of the Culture Compass for Europe, we call on policymakers to recognise the foundational role of cultural and arts education in building just and sustainable societies. This requires long-term investment in cultural educators, mainstreaming culture across curricula, and valuing the arts not only for their economic impact but for their capacity to build resilience, solidarity, and hope.

ENCATC members are already doing this work—in universities, NGOs, cultural institutions, and community projects across Europe and beyond. Our Congress in Barcelona is an opportunity to spotlight these efforts and more intentionally cultivate social learning spaces within and beyond our network - supporting deeper engagement, nurture innovation, and strengthen the collective capacity of our sector. Our Congress this year will be a key moment to reflect on these practices and to set the stage for ENCATC’s continued contributions to cultural education, policy, and leadership.

This is a call to action. Let us strengthen our action as a community of practitioners learning together to make a difference, and spotlight cultural and arts education as a lever for transformation - preparing not just workers for tomorrow, but citizens capable of co-creating regenerative futures.