The Warsaw Forum was a conversation about audiences, the arts and democracy hosted by the City of Warsaw in September 2018. An invitation-only event, The Warsaw Forum gathered together researchers, cultural practitioners, activists, policy-makers, and decision makers representing different cultural disciplines from across the EU and further afield. The event was the result of collaboration on a number of European projects by different organisations, which now form the Steering Committee, and which collectively brought time, energy and experience to bear in bringing this event to fruition.

The present report represents an extract of the conversations had at the Warsaw Forum. The report is structured in 4 chapters, corresponding to the four themes of the forum: ‘Is the role of culture in society changing?’, ‘How do we understand the politics of cultural authority when thinking about audiences and public engagement?’, ‘What will cultural democracy mean in the C21st/next 10 years?’ and ‘What is the role of cultural policymakers in widening participation and promoting cultural democracy?’.

You can read the final report of the forum here: 

The present document lists the recommendations carried out within the validation framework of CONNECT, a Knowledge Alliance Erasmus+ project (2017-2019). The validation activities are strictly related to its main output, the Twin-Track Programme (TTP) that was designed and implemented in 5 countries of the Consortium: Spain, Denmark, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom.

The first 10 recommendations are related to validation and general teaching in both curricular, academic, university-based context and the continuous professional learning context related to non-university teaching and training organisations. Recommendations 11 to 27 consist of more precise issues pointed by the consortium partners that might be seen as more detailed recommendations and guidelines for reflection and change in the practice-oriented teaching and training.

This report is a summary of the results of the monitoring and evaluation activities carried out during the CONNECT over a period of 36 months from 1/01/2017 – 31/12/2019.

It is an attempt to narrate what has been happening, it probably reflects the complexity of the project and what we have achieved, less all the encounters, the serendipity moments, the tough parts and the good parts, that everyone involved from the project consortium contributed to.

We thank all the directly involved 165 beneficiaries: 63 students from Arts/Heritage/Culture Masters’ courses, 61 practitioners from 21 museums, 18 theatres, 6 cultural centers, 5 festivals, 4 orchestras, 3 libraries, 1 historical archive and 12 other types of cultural enterprises from Denmark, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK. In addition, also 41 mentors, expert in audience development and cultural management, to support the students and practitioner during the learning programme and all the other stakeholders that supported us through this journey.

The twin track programme reflects the density and the diversity of the cultural sector across Europe, which is seen as a valuable aspect of the sector and the project.

This report has been bone By Melting Pro in collaboration with the external evaluator DISAMIS.