25th ENCATC Congress was held in Brussels

On the first day of this year’s meeting on cultural networks, ENCATC The European Network on Cultural Management and Policy which celebrates its 25th anniversary, first held a network session on the current projects and cooperation of the members, then enabled further integration of the group that has been formed and supported by it’s General Assembly. Since Taiwan and the US counterparts, TACPS and AAAE, have also been hosted at ENCATC meetings in the last couple of years, developments in Asia and North America can be brought into debate by the conveyance of stakeholders.  At this year's meeting, the diversity of discussions has increased in the joint sessions with cases from different countries and different cultural policy practices.

The institution has hosted a large group with a broad spectrum of participants, ranging from cultural diversity and diplomacy to cultural entrepreneurship, from educational institutions to creative networks, from historical and spatial development of cultural policies to technological developments, from project cooperation to evaluation, has also incorporated into the program bureaucrats working on cultural diplomacy in Brussels. It was completed at BOZAR.  In this session, which took place with the participation of European Commissioner Walter Zampieri, a former academician, cultural institutions and actors in the bureaucracy in Brussels came together.

Supported by the Creative Europe program, ENCATC's close work with the Brussels bureaucracy and the fact that its headquarters is also being based there have created a sincere platform for the debates on developments.

The conference keynote was given by KPY's advisory board member and one of the latest editors of the Yearbook, UNESCO Chair holder Professor Milena Dragićević-Šešić; and she linked the stories of networks to the stories of resistance; particularly to the compelling of the dominance of Western politics, especially by the Eastern European countries.

Papers presented in different research sessions continued with especially end of-presentation discussions, and a focused discussion took place in each parallel session. In the subsequent sessions, the sustainability of the Compendium platform, an important platform for the Cultural Policies, was discussed and a session was held regarding the works that focused on 2018 Cultural Heritage. You may reach to the papers and general program from the blog link.

Rebecca Amsellem received the ENCATC Young Researcher Award this year, with her work on innovative business models; which will be published next year as a book. The conference was concluded with the launch of the "Cultural Diplomacy" book in which Assoc. Prof. Serhan Ada, the Director of KPY, has also made contributions.