Cultural Rights & Artistic Freedom
Cultural rights, artistic freedom and their impact on festivals across Europe are central to EFA's agenda and longstanding commitment to promoting a more inclusive and resilient cultural landscape. This section highlights EFA's efforts and ongoing initiatives from late 2024 and 2025, focusing on these critical issues as part of our 2025 annual campaign and sector dialogue.
We live in an era of rapid transformation marked by geopolitical hostilities, wars, climate change, technological shifts, fragmented and individualised societies, disinformation, and growing inequalities. In this complex landscape, what is the role of arts, festivals, and cultural networks? How can the sector better harness the potential of arts and culture to contribute to the European project and address the challenges of our time?
A core responsibility of networks, like EFA, is to bridge grassroots knowledge with policymakers—from local to EU levels—and vice versa. Through year-round engagement with the festival sector, EFA listens, represents, and is a voice for festivals at European and international levels. Our approach is rooted in dialogue: understanding, facilitating, and actively shaping the role of festivals in cultural policymaking.
Each year, EFA spotlights a key societal issue, shaping discussions and initiatives across the network. In 2025, we turn our focus to cultural rights and artistic freedom, fundamental pillars of democracies, increasingly challenged and under threat. We aim to better understand the local impact of these challenges on the festival sector and the broader European cultural landscape. To strengthen the vibrancy and resilience of the sector, we must safeguard and promote its fundamental rights, ensuring that artistic freedom, cultural diversity, and access to the arts remain nurtured and actively upheld.
This initiative will be brought to life through partnerships with fellow European cultural networks, collaborative policy dialogue and advocacy efforts, ensuring a structured and far-reaching impact. In 2025, EFA will lead a annual campaign and sector dialogue by engaging different networks.
Artistic freedom and cultural rights have always been at the heart of EFA’s work. These topics have long been embedded in our mission, and we continue to build on past efforts.
As part of our ongoing reflection and annual focus on these crucial issues, we invite you to discover some key actions taken in late 2024/2025.