EU cultural policy acts in a multi-layered, transnational, and highly bureaucratized decision-making context where global dynamics, flag representations, and local and political exigencies converge and collide. Throughout its offices, representatives, and policy programmes, the EU cultural policy connects a constellation of communities, cities, and governments. It operates in a meta-space which is designed throughout complex negotiations among the EU bodies (the Council, the Parliament, and the Commission) and stakeholders, with the attempt to overcome competitive dynamics among the Member-States. By encouraging the construction of the EU cultural community, the EU cultural policy appears to be a lively process, politically rooted and designed thanks to the contributions of the players who have performed in it.
Therefore, this article, by taking advantage of my double entry into the Creative Europe programme (2014-2020) as a researcher and curator of EU cultural cooperation projects, aims to look at the role that emotions, personal beliefs and political efforts have had in this context. Especially, my aim is to observe the contribution of the actors operating in the top-down policy making and in the bottom-up cultural sector who, by performing in ‘micropolitical conformations’, have favoured the development of the preparatory spaces of the cultural policy process.
The spread of the Covid-19 virus and the consequent crisis have given a boost to the design of coming funding schemes…