The School of Advocacy Network for cultural policy – learning to speak where decisions are made
The Culture Action Europe (CAE) Nordic-Baltic Hub – of which NDPC is a key partner – is entering a new chapter!
With long-term funding from Nordic Culture Point covering mid-2026 through December 2028, the hub is now developing as the CAE Nordic-Baltic School of Advocacy Network, co-coordinated by Space-time Works (Sweden) and CKI (Center for Kunst & Interkultur, Denmark), with Intercult (Sweden) and the Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture (NDPC, Latvia) as core partners.
The CAE Nordic-Baltic Hub is a regional cultural strategy network that unites artists, cultural leaders, and organizations across Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia to strengthen local advocacy and connect regional voices to European cultural policy.
“The field already holds most of what advocacy needs. Artists and organisations understand their conditions with a precision no position paper can match, and the opportunity now is to make that knowledge travel further and reach the places where decisions are taken. ” – Burak Sayin (Space-time Works) and Niels Righolt (Center for Kunst og Interkultur)
About the project
The network runs a series of Labs for Cultural Democracy across four locations: Møn (Denmark), Nuuk (Greenland), the Baltic region, and Stockholm. Each lab brings together artists, cultural organisations, and cultural leaders to exchange knowledge, collect signals from the field, and strengthen capacity for cultural advocacy. Labs are anchored in the Culture Goal framework, a global initiative advocating for culture as a standalone goal in sustainable development, and address themes including artistic freedom, democratic resistance, and cultural sustainability.
The School of Advocacy offers a capacity-building programme for cultural leaders through webinars, building knowledge and skills for engaging in policy processes at national and European levels. The network also runs a mentoring programme for emerging cultural organisations, with a priority focus on Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands.
As Culture Action Europe continues to shape the position of culture in the future of Europe through the EU Culture Compass, the School of Advocacy Network will carry this work into the Nordic-Baltic region, gathering local cultural actors through the labs and academy programme to engage them in the future cultural politics of the EU and connect regional voices to European policy processes.
For more information about the project, contact the lead partner Burak Sayin: burak@stw.nu
Contact person at NDPC
Krista Petäjäjärvi, krista@ndpculture.org