Project

Young European (Cultural) Audience Development

Six organizations from Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, and The Netherlands, all working on social and cultural issues, brought together their experiences, networks, and skills to give young people coming from all over Europe and further a chance to question their interaction with culture. From 2015 to 2019, young people 18 to 25 from underprivileged backgrounds will examine the ways in which they feel included, recognized, or rejected by certain cultural institutions.

YEAD’s goal is to encourage these young people to play an active part in European cultureas spectators, by developing their appetite for culture, but also as creators, by producing art pieces themselves but also by perceiving and reintrepreting cultural heritage and cultural institutions in a way that is relevant to their lives.

Our six associations strongly believe that the hands on experience of artistic practices is a tool for social inclusion that helps explore self-knowledge and strengthens willpower.

Videos and images will be the main creative support. Why? Because images are everywhere and learning how to read them can teach young people how to use them. Because making videos requires team work and confronting one’s ideas with others is an excellent way to articulate and develop a project. In each of the participating countries, video workshops will be set up by professionals. The short films that will come out of these workshops will speak about identity, cultural democracy, heritage and cultural diversity.

Our wish is to map out what young people expect from culture, and to identify the current shortfalls, needs, and possibilities of the relationship between young audiences and European cultural institutions and professionals.

In conjunction with the video workshops, the program will include annual seminars between partners, presentations for professionals, and a closing festival that will take place in Brussels in 2019.

Our objectives, in 4 points, are :

  1. Through workshops, bilateral exchanges and a final festival, to allow young people from different countries to create cultural forms and contents that express their vision of culture.
  2. To enable cultural professionals to re-consider today’s relationship between young European audiences and the cultural landscape, keeping in mind central issues like identity, democracy, and cultural diversity.
  3. To broaden cultural audiences, by encouraging disadvantaged young people to play an active part in shaping culture, thus becoming active participants in their own environments.
  4. To construct a web platform gathering the creations of the young people and the findings of professional meetings, in order to build a solid network defending cultural democracy in Europe.