Building synergies between education & culture

April 27, 2018, 2:32 pm

Culture and education share fertile ground for cultivating the skills needed in the societies of both today and tomorrow as well as our own personal development. In policymaking, they are the responsibility of the same directorate-general of the European Commission and some times of the same national ministry. However, this natural interlinkage is increasingly taken for granted and cooperation between the education and cultural sectors at the political level remains, to a large extent, symbolic. If this situation remains, we are missing out on the vast potential that synergies between education and culture can have, not only from an economic perspective – given the contribution that creative skills and industries make to the economy – but also and more importantly from a social perspective – given the benefits that learning about and through culture has for more inclusive societies.

Civil society from both domains recognise the need for a deeper, more wide-reaching collaboration. In 2013 the Lifelong Learning Platform, Culture Action Europe and Access to Culture released joint recommendations in their paper “Building synergies between education and culture”. Those remain as valid as ever and we continue to urge for their implementation. Nevertheless, in light of the 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage and recent policy developments, including the European Commission’s 2017 Communication “Strengthening European Identity through Education and Culture”, we, the undersigned organisations, see a clear impetus to put forward additional recommendations. These stem mainly from discussions at the conference “Culture and Education for All: Building the Skills for More Resilient Societies” held in Brussels on 14 March 2018.

Read the joint position from Culture Action Europe, Lifelong Learning Platform, European Association for Education of Adults, EDEN, European University Foundation, EUROCLIO, Europeana and Public Libraries 2020 in full.

Listen to CAE Salon Culture below to know why must culture be central in rebuilding Europe? How does culture foster development of sustainable and resilient societies? Why should culture and the arts get a substantial financial support?

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