The EU is still the largest group of democracies, but the world is facing rapid social, economic, technological and geopolitical change impacting strongly democratic frameworks. These changes require good and rapid responses by policy- and decision-makers as well as stakeholders.

In the context of Creative FLIP, we aim at supporting good (culture) policy-making in the European Union. With the series of CREATIVE FLIP (CULTURE) POLICY ORIENTATIONS, we explore some of the main challenges in the European Union with the objective to better integrate culture (policy) in transformation areas. To do this, we make use of the Creative FLIP Collaborative Transformation Policy Approach, developed in 2023 and which identifies 8 elements of good (cultural) policy making in transformational times.

In this policy orientation paper, we specifically focus on the role of transformational (cultural) policy making – in particular related to (cultural) spaces – in safeguarding democracy.

An interview with the Creative FLIP expert and author Sylvia Amann on the topic can be read here.