We recently started a series of articles entitled ‘Towards an AEC Advocacy Strategy’. The first chapter dealt with the question: What is advocacy? and in the previous newsletter, we reported on how important it is for efficient advocacy to join forces with European and international partner organisations.
Before moving to the third and, for the time being, final chapter of the series, it is important to report on an event illustrating how valuable it is when partners join forces in the field of advocacy on 28th February, an alliance of European organisations from the cultural sector under the lead of Culture Action Europe (CAE), the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) and Europa Nostra hosted the Cultural Deal for Europe annual policy conversation: Culture is the new energy for Europe: an open conversation between European policy-makers and the cultural ecosystem.
The event involved: Vice-President of the European Commission Margaritis Schinas, the Chair of the CULT Committee of the European Parliament Sabine Verheyen, and Members of the European Parliament Alexis Georgoulis and Marcos Ros Sempere.
The event came at a strategic time ahead of two important milestones: the European Parliament elections in 2024, preceded in 2023 by the mid-term review of the 2021-2023 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), which might add extra resources to the EU’s budget for the second half of the financial cycle.
The conversations remarked on how culture needs to be at the core of both debates and strategically addressed ahead of the major democratic exercise in Europe. You can watch the third edition of the Cultural Deal for Europe Annual Policy Conversation here.
Finally, we strongly encourage you to endorse the Cultural Deal for Europe campaign now!
The meeting can be seen to be quite successful although it did not produce any immediately visible, tangible results.
And yet, such events generate considerable added value on several levels and reflecting on such opportunities brings us back to our plan to develop an advocacy strategy.
By offering political decision-makers a stage to present themselves to the representatives of the sector, they are encouraged to update themselves on the actual issues and burning problems relevant to the sector. But such events are also an opportunity to show that the sector speaks with one voice, or at least to show that the interests and viewpoints expressed are not just the opinions of individual players in the sector. In addition, it is an incentive to ask specific questions and to present arguments, to start a conversation and to show readiness to contribute input or feedback for the further process of developing a policy, a strategy or a law.
For AEC, however, such situations and events are also useful and informative to find out how the members of parliament think and behave, what political constraints they are facing and what the possibility for influence is. Last but not least, it’s an opportunity to establish personal relationships.
In conclusion, to sum up, generally speaking, one can influence power relations within the framework of advocacy actions by:
– making one’s voice and the voices of those who share one’s interests and values better heard.
– providing information on the special features of the subject in question (in this case: higher music education) and the related requirements and needs that must be met in order to enable one’s organisation (in this case: AEC) to carry out the task assigned to it.
– joining forces and launching joint projects and campaigns with partners who are pursuing similar goals.
