Deconfining arts, culture and policies in Europe and Africa

The project DECONFINING is implemented by 12 partners in 11 European countries aiming to develop a reference practice between the EU and Africa for sustainable, fair intercontinental cultural exchanges to spread to further world regions. EU-Africa cultural exchange is critical to build new narratives for an inclusive future. All artistic partners are situated in European Capitals of Culture – mostly smaller cities with lesser beyond the EU cooperation activities. The emphasis is put on a novel participatory framework of collaborating both virtually and physically – to research, co-create, set new mobility and policy recommendations, and to create, tour and disseminate art projects. This approach fits the EU strategy for international cultural relations. The thematical framework is (social, environmental, spatial) deconfining of intercontinental relationships which we define as breaking-up of paternalistic and colonial patterns in favor of a strong participatory attitude and equal-level co-creation approach. This application was already developed in this spirit of global togetherness. Intercontinental (policy, financing, mobility) frameworks remain challenging (also due to pandemic) and need to be systematically addressed for improved cooperation settings. Therefore, the project DECONFINING foresees a complementary policy and service strand to support the professional implementation of intercontinental local-to-local artistic cooperation as well as the internationalisation of ECoCs. This will be achieved by connecting cultural operators, (cultural) policymakers, performing, media / visual art artists, in-field universities and audiences from both continents. The project will deliver 4 fora, 4 micro-conferences, a mobility platform, an interactive policy toolkit, a DECONFINING anthology ebook, newly created art pieces including performances, installations, 20 podcasts featuring (tandem) artistic practices, 12 art tourings and a rich open digital archive.