LabforCulture is an autonomous project hosted by the European Cultural Foundation (ECF). LabforCulture maintains operational independence from the ECF and all content decisions and directions are decided by the LabforCulture Director with the ongoing advice and input from the team and a range of partners and stakeholders.

LabforCulture Steering Committee

The Steering Committee was established to oversee the development, implementation and staffing of the project. The Steering Committee comprises representatives of the ECF Board, key private and public sector funders, project partners and leaders within the cultural community. Active participation and leadership by the members of the Steering Committee has ensured the success and autonomous nature of the project. Rotating membership brings continuous fresh and diverse perspectives.

The Steering Committee consists of representatives from each of the following bodies: Compagnia di San Paolo, Italy (Dario Disegni,Chair); Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Poland; Stiftelsen Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Sweden; The Robert Bosch Foundation, Germany. The Steering Committee also has two representatives from the Advisory Group: Michael Freundt, German International Theatre Institute (ITI) and Ana Žuvela Bušnja, Culturelink (Co-Chair). There are also two representatives from the ECF on the Steering Committee: András Török – ECF Board Member and Gottfried Wagner – Director. ECF Treasurer Arent Foch is an observer on the Steering Committee and Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung (BPB) is represented with a non-voting observer status.

LabforCulture Advisory Group

From the outset, LabforCulture was conceived as a networked project, involving the cultural sector in its development. A Stakeholders Forum was established that brought together cultural networks, Europe-wide service organisations, cultural observatories and discipline-specific networks . These parties had an interest in the project and brokered connections between the project and their constituencies. As the pilot phase drew to a close in 2007, it was clear that the primary role of the Stakeholders Forum was one of strategic advice and maintaining the flow of information between LabforCulture and the various elements of the cultural sector (to ensure the long-term benefit of the project to the sector). In this capacity, the Stakeholders Forum will continue as an Advisory Group drawn from the cultural community, with some fixed and some fluctuating members; the latter will respond to the changing needs and the specific projects undertaken by LabforCulture.

The Stakeholder Forum group in the pilot phase included representatives from the following organisations: Arts Management Network, Boekman Foundation/RECAP, Budapest Observatory, CIRCLE and the Jagiellonian University, Culturelink, Cultural Contact Point Germany, Deutsches InformationsZentrum Kulturförderung (DIZK), EDUCULT, European Forum for the Arts and Heritage (EFAH), European Institute for Comparative Cultural Research (ERICarts), European League of Institutes of the Arts (ELIA), European Music Council (EMC), European Network of Cultural Administration Training Centres (ENCATC), European Network of Information Centres for the Performing Arts (ENICPA), Europa Nostra, EUCLID, European Writers Congress, Fitzcarraldo Foundation, Informal European Theatre Meetings (IETM), International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA), Interarts Foundation, Les Rencontres, Observatoire des Politiques Culturelles de Grenoble, Olivetti Foundation, The Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean (BJCEM), Relais Culture Europe, Villa Decius and Visiting Arts.

Interested partners and supporters meet once a year at the LabforCulture Assembly. In 2005, the 1st Assembly was hosted by the European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam, in 2006 the 2nd Assembly was hosted by Compagnia di San Paolo, Turin and the 3rd Assembly was hosted by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon in 2007.

Background

LabforCulture is an autonomous project initiated in 2004 and hosted by the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) in Amsterdam.

Evidence showed that information on cultural cooperation across borders was difficult to access. This was specifically highlighted in the Ruffolo Report on cultural cooperation in the European Union, commissioned by the European Parliament in 2001. Research carried out by the European Commission, European think tanks and the ECF confirmed that an online platform was needed to promote online participation and debate. LabforCulture.org was developed in partnership with key European cultural networks and organisations to fill this gap.

The LabforCulture website is developed using open source software. All content on the site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Gateway to Cultural Cooperation (G2CC) Project (2004-2006)

The Gateway to Cultural Cooperation (G2CC) project, supported by the European Union - Directorate General for Education and Culture (Dec. 2004 - Dec. 2006), provided the first content and technical framework in the implementation of LabforCulture.org. The G2CC project was run for two years as an active partnership between the four co-organisers: European Cultural Foundation (ECF), ERICarts Institute, Fitzcarraldo Foundation, and On-the-Move Association, as well as with 14 associated partners. Read more in the background paper “European Cultural Co-operation in the G2CC-LAB-Environment”.