The Come2Art National and European Policy Roundtables facilitated discussions in a group setting with the goal of equitable participation and exchange amongst participants on a given topic. These roundtables were designed as an inclusive and intentional way for participants to speak openly about their knowledge, ideas and sometimes to answer questions on a specific topic. The overarching goal is to engage directly with participants in order to identify opportunities and challenges from their perspective.

These Policy Roundtables were used to:

• Explore local issues and learn about a community’s thoughts, perceptions, and desires
• Learn what does and doesn’t work
• Develop resources
• Introduce the broad goals for a community project and get feedback for action steps to meet those goals
• Hold space for respectful open debate
• Develop policy recommendations

The overarching goal of the Roundtables is to result in recommendations that:

• Place arts in the centre of life skills development while fostering belonging and arts-based social inclusion at the community level
• Advocate for new roles to be undertaken by artists and cultural workers as community educators and creativity ambassadors, democratising arts and exploring new audiences and opportunities for them to promote their work as well as to
• Coordinate community’s involvement in cultural planning and re-imagination of public spaces through arts

The two-year Come2Art project developed an interventional framework for promoting life skills development and application through creative placemaking, a life skills curriculum (including a trainer’s and trainee’s toolkit) through arts in the context of creative placemaking, co-creativity hubs connecting community members and artists for life skills application, and creativity placemaking projects at the local level inspired by COVID-19 experiences. In the final stages of the project, Come2Art partners held multiple National Policy Rundables to share the findings and success of their work between artists and community members and together developed key advocacy points to bring to a larger audience at the European Policy Roundtable event held in Brussels, Belgium in June 2023.

Over 70 artists, community members, civil society organisations and policymakers from across Europe took part in the bottom-up, participatory workshop which resulted in the elaboration of the following collective set of six recommendations. This document advocates for policy support for developing the skills of artists to take a social role in building community resilience through artistic practices at the local, regional, national and European levels. These recommendations will inform European, national, regional and local policymakers, as well as civil society organisations that focus on advocacy for artists and the development of inclusive practices in educational spaces. 

The following recommendations are imagined as a set of accessible reference points to supplement ongoing conversation and decision-making around policy processes that focus on the development of artists’ and cultural workers’ skills.