Arts

How can arts and culture help reorient collective goals and expectations towards more sustainable futures?

Creative Europe funding represents a lifeline for many artists and creatives, but it comes with strings attached such as greening requirements.

For Mariana Mazzucato, arts and culture don’t just contribute to the economy – they mould it.

Ernest Urtasun lays out his vision for culture as a driver of equality and social transformation.

Despite decades of crackdown, Iranian artists continue to produce political works.

Justin O’Connor views culture as part of society’s basic infrastructure.

Art has a unique capacity to capture complexity, Lucile Schmid and Ladislav Miko tell Edouard Gaudot.

Laurence Vandewalle breaks down the history of Chinese cultural soft power.

Activists and climate groups have carried out a series of non-violent but disruptive acts in cultural institutions. But what has driven them?

Across Europe, arts and culture are facing defunding, job precarity, censorship, marginalisation, and instrumentalisation by economic and political agendas. How do we assert the value of culture and protect artistic freedom in this challenging landscape? And under what conditions can culture meaningfully contribute to the ecological transformation?

This editorial introduces Acting Out: Arts and Culture Under Pressure, the winter 2025 print edition of the Green European Journal.