“Os que así nos téin só téin noso os nosos nomes no censo”  Uxío Novoneyra

“Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits”  

(Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948).

Networking is a strategic pillar of the INDIGENO communication and outreach campaign. Assuming our TOP 8 of cultural centers performance principles: 

1. The project’s current cultural context is a more direct parameter needed to design it. The impression of the structure should attract a young demographic that will use the centre to its fullest. 

2. A cultural center plays a vital role in retaining values and beliefs for the community. The integration of architectural features, forms, materials, and artwork help imbibe the past as an active part of the future. Moreover, a fundamental feeling of oneness is established, creating a brotherhood that caters to the close citizenship.

3. A cultural centre plays a vital role in retaining values and beliefs for the territory, being an historic center, urban neighbourhood or rural, remote and mountains area. The integration of architectural features, forms, materials, and artwork help imbibe the past as an active part of the future. Moreover, a fundamental feeling of oneness is established, creating a brotherhood that caters to the close citizens.

4. Identifying the cultural centre’s use is the first step in defining it. The function is often derived from the passions or needs of the community.

5. Nature is a timeless part of any culture and demands the respect and attention of cultural managers that choose to build on it. Aside from determining the energy efficiency of a building, the integration of nature into a structure connects people to the land, even on urban contexts.

6. Sculpting the community audience for the years to come is another intricate part of any cultural center. A vision for the society in the coming years is just as important as retaining the values of old.

7. Designing a cultural center usually has deep-seated reasoning behind it. Cultural centers and their concepts are always at the forefront of designs. However, the funding and reasoning behind the timely construction always revolve around a particular motive.

8. An engaging facade and an abundance of versatile spaces are pivotal in the assimilation of a cultural center.

The keen insight into the current trends is pivotal in defining spaces and influencing people in the right way. In Europe the combined effects of the economic crisis, demographic or migratory factors and a decline in resources, call for new development models driven by greater democracy, strengthened citizen participation and better governance based on more open, reactive, and transparent institutions. This is true also for the cultural sector, where public participation is practiced by an increasing number of cultural organisations and participatory governance of cultural heritage has become a key priority in European cultural policies.

In opening to participatory practices, cultural institutions acknowledge that the knowledge and skills of local citizens and laypeople have as much value as those of experts and recognize that the public has a significant role to play. At the same time, however, they must adopt new management and organisational models, create the conditions for participatory activities to be funded and sustainable in the long run and ultimately empower people and help them build stronger communities.

INDIGENO.network-ing activities target projects and initiatives operating at European level which, to various extent and through different perspectives, focus their work on best practices on integrating the vicinity audiences on their cultural centres. 

The networking primarily aims at sharing INDIGENO results and spreading information about recent achievements of the project in order to foster the adoption of INDIGENO  approach among cultural spaces interested in well-integrating their vicinity audiences to regenerate their cultural action. 

Moreover, through networking, INDIGENO seeks to be regularly informed about accomplishments of other projects and initiatives, with a view to complement the knowledge already gathered by the INDIGENO consortium and networks and to feed the ongoing project activities. 

Finally, networking is also a mean to explore opportunities for developing common activities of mutual interest, and thus joining forces to promote and reinforce the integration of neighbours in  zero kilometre policies of cultural centres.

INDIGENO networking approach is based on maintaining regular contact with relevant projects and initiatives, exchanging information about recent achievements (also by using social media), participating to each other events (also as speakers/presenters), organizing common activities and events, developing common results and promoting research advancements.

INDIGENO has been actively involved in networking since the beginning of the project, i.e. since 2021. 

The networking team regularly performs mapping of relevant projects and initiatives to ensure that all new opportunities are timely addressed, while we are also open for cooperation prospects coming from third parties. Currently, INDIGENO cooperates with approximately 25 projects and initiatives, and this number is constantly increasing. 

Those with whom collaboration is particularly close, i.e. those where common activities have been planned or developed, are presented below. 

• While all those projects are related to the topic of integration of vicinity audiences on their close cultural centres, they tackle this issue from various perspectives, e.g., looking at methodologies imported from social policies (ROCK, ROBUST), 

• investment and business approaches (Following examples as KEA, investing in cultural and creative sectors (CCS) is important due to the direct and indirect benefits they generate for the economy and society. Public expenditure on culture has promoted culture as a “merit good”, similarly to education and healthcare. However, with a growing understanding of the role that culture and creativity can play in economic development, a more diversified approach to funding cultural and creative sectors has emerged, with a greater emphasis placed on economic returns to government expenditure and a more prominent role for private investors even in cultural centers. Consequently, a more complex ecosystem of financial support for cultural centers has developed, encompassing public, private and philanthropy funding and investment), 

• cultural centres management (with encc.eu or teh.net as horizon big European networks that cultural centers are actors for social innovation and function as catalysts for change. But instead of adding it as a feature to their business model, they repel the model altogether. One center nevertheless had a respondent stating clear thoughts about their business model, even if the rest of the respondents from the same center could not explain this as easily.), 

• participatory approach (followed recommendations by the Europe 2020 strategy and the European Agenda for Culture (2015-2018) about developing participative governance in culture as well as securing mechanisms of participative decision-making for local communities, The "Council conclusions on participatory governance of cultural heritage"  of the Council of the European Union, and the EU Commission Communication “Towards an integrated approach to cultural heritage in Europe”,  both issued in 2014, identify cultural heritage as a strategic resource for a sustainable Europe, acknowledge its social dimension and underline the importance of activating synergies among different stakeholders to safeguard and valorise it. They also recognize the importance of transparent and participatory governance systems to be shared with the people to whom heritage ultimately belongs, or the report Voices of Culture (2015) Brainstorming Report. Participatory Governance in Cultural Heritage. Structure Dialogue between the European Commission and the cultural sector, p.7. Available at: https://www.voicesofculture.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/4.Brainstorming_Report_Intercultural_Dialogue.pdf (Accessed 30 Jun. 2020)-) 

• and cultural centres innovation and diplomacy (In the implementation of any foreign policy, cultural policies play a strategic role, aided by cultural and artistic wealth. Cultural centres have long served as cultural ambassadors and foreign policy instruments, bridging diplomatic relationships among nation-states and institutions. The purpose of this scoping review is to ascertain and understand the emerging areas of research on cultural centers in foreign policy and cultural diplomacy within broader research paradigms of international relations, social sciences, and information studies by systematically mapping key concepts and identifying the types of studies and knowledge gaps.). 

This mixed approach ensures that, on the one hand, INDIGENO results are developed using multidisciplinary and versatile expertise, on the other hand, other projects can benefit from INDIGENO knowledge and achievements.

If you are interested to collaborate with INDIGENO.NETWORK, please write to our networking team at INFO@UXIONOVONEYRA.COM