Between Neighbours: Crossing Voices, Crossing Borders
Hosted by: Culture Unleashed, Space-time Works AB
Istanbul, Türkiye
5-6 May · 2026
Between Neighbours: Crossing Voices, Crossing Borders is driven by the urgent need to address the cultural and political realities of our region: fragile peace, unresolved conflicts, cultural silences, and shrinking space for artistic freedom. The event will culminate in a jointly drafted Voices of the Neighbours Declaration capturing the perspectives of the region and connecting them with EU-level advocacy. This collective outcome will suggest a mixture of what participants see as urgent, what they commit to as a community, and what they recommend for future policy and cooperation.
Türkiye, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan are bound by centuries of cultural entanglement — shared traditions, culture, cuisine, and exchanges intertwined with histories of conflict, silence, and division. Today, cultural actors in all four countries face common challenges: censorship and self-censorship, fragile infrastructures, dependency on limited funding, limited understanding of how to use digital technologies, and uneven access to resources. At the same time, direct contact between the cultural communities in these countries is still rare. This gathering aims to create a space for radical imagination and concrete proposals, where we can explore how culture contributes to peace, conflict resolution, resilience, and social and cultural change, as well as how digital technologies can support these processes.