Rarița Zbranca
Rarița Zbranca has extensive experience in arts management, curating, cultural research and advocacy. She is the Programme Director of the Cluj Cultural Centre in Romania, where she co-designs strategies and programmes harnessing the role of culture as a resource in society.
Rarița is also a co-director of the Centre for Culture, Health and Social Well-being Romania (2026), a co-founder of the AltArt Foundation (1997), an organisation dedicated to experimental approaches to art, technology and society, and a co-founder of Fabrica de Pensule (2009), an independent collective space for contemporary arts in Cluj-Napoca. She is a member of the Culture and Education Committee of the Economic and Social Council of Romania, a policy adviser for Culture Next network, and a member of the board of Culture Action Europe network. She is also a member of the Strategy Group of the “A Soul for Europe” initiative, and a board member of the Balkan Express network.
Her areas of interest include the contribution of art to well-being and health, cultivating care and capacity for fair and sustainable working models in culture, and culture as a driver for social transformation and sustainable development. She co-authored the CultureForHealth Report (2022) and a series of studies on the personal, social and economic conditions of cultural workers in Romania.
She was a key member of the team preparing the bid of the city of Cluj-Napoca for the 2021 European Capital of Culture title and has coordinated the elaboration of the Cultural Strategy of Cluj-Napoca for the last three planning periods.
She has previously worked in the field of media and democracy for various organisations including, Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Center in Cluj-Napoca and Soros Foundation for an Open Society Romania. She studied Photo-Video-Digital Image at the University of Arts and Design and Journalism at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. She has a doctoral degree (2024) in cultural policies from the Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania.