In 6 presentations, from 6 different experiences and angles, we will enter into 6 working group conversations with the questions:

1.What is this very specific angle of your work that you believe is absolutely worth sharing?
2. In your very specific item you would like to highlight from your festivals’, or cities’ or regional practice or vision, where are the boundaries or the limits that you have met at a certain point: can you clearly identify and share them?
3. What is that ONE idea you have formulated for yourself how you could overcome this barrier?  And: what is the ONE act in all this I do as an explicit act for making Europe/a European community succeed (our ‘roots from above’)?
4. And of course: If we assume that we embrace an open society concept; and that Europe is (also) a community; and we assume that festivals and cities (15.000 all across Europe) are rooted in their local communities: what is the action we do or the attention we attach to contribute to the European community, or the ‘roots from above’?

The 6 presenters and workshops are:

Edit Pula is an artist / curator, music producer, artistic director and producer of the Cloud Festival and also cultural adviser of the Mayor of Tirana. Her artistic and curatorial work is very much focused on Albanian heritage, using it as a material for threading a contemporary expression. She was nominated for the European Cultural-Brand Award for enhancing tourism opportunities and the way her festival works with the municipality of Tirana.

Geert Cochez is a pioneering marketer in visit.brussels, the communications agency for tourism and culture in the Brussels Capital Region, and a capital city with a specific strategy to use the cultural offer in the city to profile and deepen its agenda. He asks for a shift in shaping together our urban agenda. He is convinced about the transversal responsibility of a city in policy-making and of civil society to go beyond our respective comfort zones (competences) and commit to a bottom up coalition of people in a joint agenda for the city. It is not just the culture department of a city that should feel about culture, or the audience development staff of a festival that should feel about the city. It is a deeper development of a joint agenda for inclusive, diverse cities as part of one’s DNA in a common chain of production: cities and festivals. The immense responsibility of cities in Europe – there are 15.000 of them - is essential for our European communities. Policy making, our common ground, bottom up (and top down), cities as laboratories of “Europeaness”.

Harm Christian Tolden holds the position as Director General of the Department of Climate, Culture and Business Development at the City of Bergen. Bergen has, together with the Bergen International Festival and its director Anders Beyer, developed a joint strategy: is Bergen an example for other cities to follow? What were the steps, the needs, the strategy? Anders Beyer will lead the workshop and go deeper into the Bergen Now platform previously presented by Harm Christian Tolden.

Joanna Baker as Marketing and Public Affairs Director and Managing Director of the Edinburgh International Festival for 27 years has lived as no other the development of the city’s maybe biggest treasure: its festivals. Edinburgh is ‘the world’s leading festival city’ as the homepage of Edinburgh Festivals says. There are few other cities, such as Rotterdam, or Helsinki, that make the choice from within the festivals’ collective to set up a city marketing/festival marketing tool such as this one. What can we learn from this example in its parameters?

Vincent Nijs is asking himself in his research 'Tourism Transforms' about the interaction between travellers, places and inhabitants. How do we ensure there is a healthy balance between the interests of residents and visors? How can we honour and maintain the natural richness and historical authenticity of our destinations? How can tourism ensure that our local communities continue to thrive in such a way that genuine hospitality goes without saying? We would love to hear from Visit Flanders’ choices, and get some insight into the European market how tourism is measured and how tourism policies of the future look like, what are the trends, the accepted success criteria? What is the positive power of tourism?

Wouter van Looy is a stage director active in international opera and musical theatre. Wouter has a specific view on how a festival that focuses on younger audiences can transform traditional cultural institutions, conventional offers and the habitat of the city where it takes place (Big Bang happens also in co-creation with cities)? Artistically, he works with the creativity in kids and what we can learn from younger audiences in terms of understanding anti-genre artistic expressions and new articulations in music as children are much more open to anything and everything new.