Culture Action Europe Special Newsletter | Artistic Freedom
In this quarter’s newsletter, Culture Action Europe focuses on the rise in the arts and cultural milieu to calling out the need for protection and promotion of artistic freedom. Pandemics have jeopardised nationalism and localisation tendencies already present within the EU before Covid19, further shrinking political, civic, artistic, and new unregulated public spaces online. Recent reports have shown that several countries are censoring and sentencing artists in all kinds of art forms for allegedly insulting heads of state, hurting religious feelings or glorifying terrorism. In many ways, the increase of funding cuts to the arts sector is seen as a way to silence opinions within the EU.
Culture Action Europe with members and partners continues to advocate for the importance of preserving freedom of expression, stressing that artistic freedom is essential to maintaining a democratic, free, diverse and fair society. Earlier this year, Culture Action Europe and Freemuse presented three jointly developed recommendations to the European Parliament, pertaining to the legal framework, the monitoring and the support to civil society organizations in facing the impediments to artistic freedom. In a co-written statement, Culture Action Europe collaborated to outline a number of approaches to further developing active involvement and recognition of civil society as an important pillar of democracy. Additionally, Culture Action Europe and its partners called on the European Commission to take positive action to monitor and promote freedom of expression in all its forms, to develop appropriate instruments at the EU level whereby artistic freedom can be monitored and assessed as one of the legitimate indicators of democratic and cultural health, foresee a facility through which artists can report violations of their fundamental rights and establish an EU mechanism on democracy, the rule of law, and fundamental rights, including artistic freedom.
Why is it fundamental and urgent to protect artistic freedom in Europe?
Read more here.