Strengthening European Identity through Education and Culture and how to manage it
Steve Austen & Bart Lommen
Considerations for a new approach to value European Identity
Europe is in need of a new story, so the budgetary period 2021–2027 could be characterised as Europe 2.0. Besides the call for inspired leaders able to formulate and communicate a new Schuman Declaration, there is a great need to scrutinise the European values anew. This aspect seems to be increasingly taking shape. The fundaments of Europe 2.0 are culture, identity and education. It must be recognized that, according to the principle of subsidiarity (Treaty of Maastricht), these are issues for each nation to tackle, but reading the latest bulletins from the European Commission, it is evident that the panels are shifting: according to the European Commission, culture, identity and education is the cement of Europe and thus the basis for the redefinition of this continent.
A common market for goods and services
Europe was constructed on the ashes of two World Wars. It is not illogical that all hopes for the reconstruction of Europe was placed in intensive economic cooperation. It was supposed that, if the economy grew, everything would turn out alright. For many years the development of Europe has been placed in that perspective. Today’s Europe originated from the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (Treaty of Paris, 1951).This was later transformed into the European Economic Community (Treaty of Rome, 1957) and further into the European Union by the Treaty of Maastricht (1992). Over the years this process has been accompanied by the growth in the number of member states from 7 to 28. The Treaty of Lisbon (2009) also emphasised the economic raison d’être of the EU, particularly with regard to increasing employment. And rightly so: Europe now has the second highest GDP in the world (after the United States) so higher than China, India, Japan, Russia. In terms of personal welfare the EU is number 2 and 2.8 million new jobs have been created within this internal free market. Social legislation is reciprocally recognised throughout the EU and the free movement of persons, services, goods and capital is guaranteed.
Focus on economy is not enough: the role of citizens and culture must be strengthened
The strong focus on economic development has turned out to be insufficient to give Europe’s identity a content. Those modest additional measures that Europe did take, besides the policy of the member states in the domain of culture, media and education (the Bologna process introduced the Ba(chelor)Ma(ster) structure, in which higher education courses in Europe are harmonised, but there is as yet no recognised/validated European higher education diploma. Its absence hinders the free movement of persons, goods and ideas — one of the objectives of the EU) have been successful in themselves, but have been proven so far to be inadequate as a contributory force when it comes to the creation of such a thing as a shared European identity. The reception of many refugees brings us into direct and perma-nent contact with other cultures. This accounts for the need to (re)define European culture. National governments, and with them the European Commission, are no longer taken for granted and accepted by citizens. The latter are stirring and increasingly want to have a say and exert their influence in different ways. Grassroots organisations are mushrooming. Active citizenship and training in its exercise will have to contribute to giving citizens a louder voice.
More emphasis on culture
The wait-and-see stance that Europe initially adopted with respect to a commitment to supporting the regional cultures of the member states and regions (Treaty of Lisbon, 2009) did not change until a European Agenda for Culture (2007) was actually implemented. On this moment this Agenda needs to be adjusted. A roadmap has been developed for that purpose.
That roadmap was established during the Social Summit for Fair Jobs and Growth in
Göteborg (2017). A mood for change was dominating the summit and the ambition of the European Commission emerged plainly. With respect for the principle of subsidiarity, the European Commission has started a process in which culture, education and identity will form the foundations for Europe 2.0. In other words, European identity only can be strengthened (and feelings of nationalism and unrest can only be combatted) by placing education and culture within a European context. It is a matter of sharing European norms and values through communication and strengthening these values through education and culture.
In the perspective of the Gothenburg communiqué, cultural institutions, education in general and higher education institutions in particular prove to be part of the call to the entire sector to contribute to strengthening European identity. That priority goes together with the intention of the Commission to increase significantly the budget for culture, heritage and education. It is urgent for cultural institutions to prepare themselves to satisfy the ambitions of the EU by taking action and reconsidering their position in which questions must be asked in which way these sectors can contribute to strengthening European identity, what their ideas are about it, and which examples can be pinpointed in practice.
The role of cultural and heritage institutions
Notably institutions in the domain of art, culture and heritage are able through education to discuss the danger of national identity politics and finding solutions through discussion and communication. The attractiveness of the story about the nation state in crisis is hidden behind the clear- cut right/wrong framework that the narrative offers. It reduces elusive phenomena such as globalisation and increase of scale to a question of the neglect of national identity, and places the cause of the alleged crisis there. As always, complex issues cannot be resolved with simple answers. The success of the European project is an example of tackling complex different insights and opinions as long as they are embedded in democratic rules of play and based on the system of the constitutional state. In return, this achievement stimulate the citizens of Europe, the member states and the Commission to give European Citizenship (as laid down in the Treaty of Lisbon) a real content.
The European Commission recently showed its ambition when it presented the budgets for the period 2021–2027. The Erasmus programme (which is used by 400,000 young people every year) will be supported by a budget twice as much as in the period 2004–2020 and the Creative Europe programme has also been assigned a considerable budgetary increase.
A European MBA to manage these complex processes
To anticipate on all of these developments, an MBA in Culture, Heritage and Citizenship was launched in the Netherlands in 2016. This course has received European recognition through a contribution from the Erasmus+ 2014–2020 programme. It is an initiative of the Netherlands Business Academy (NLBA) and the Amsterdam-Maastricht Summer University (AMSU). Six leading European cultural institutions and universities will work together for three years on developing a joint curriculum for an English-language MBA in European Culture, Heritage and Citizenship (ECHC).
Given the importance of the preceding considerations, the results of this joint project will be presented during an international congress to be held in Pakhuis de Zwijger (Amsterdam) at the 19th of June in 2020. The presentation of the results of the ECHC project forms part of a large-scale inventory of the results and plans of other participating institutions in the ECHC project in the light of the new developments in Europe. But the main focus of the congress will be the role of the institutions in the domains of education, culture and identity in strengthening European identity and how to manage it.
The main goal of the international congress is the question to what extent the ambition expressed by the European Commission in Gothenburg is relevant for cultural and heritage institutions and in which way that is being reflected in the (re)positioning of individual cultural organisations and their networks. It will also examine whether, and if so how, the cultural institutions are prepared for the new 2021–2027 budgetary period and the New European Agenda for Culture. A great deal of attention will be paid to the question how the cultural institutions deal with this ambition and to what extent it can be implemented practically in the local, regional and national context.
The congress will be held at a moment when more is known about the different insights in which the broad cultural sector has anticipated the new subsidy programmes for the EU period 2021–2027 and the renewed Agenda for European Culture. It is now the time to exchange ideas, practical proposals and expected developments.
European Citizenship, Heritage, Culture — Project Information
This project aims to contribute to more shared knowledge and good practices by the cooperation in the development of a joint study program based on the interconnectivity of citizenship, heritage and entrepreneurship. The outcomes must lead to new labour market opportunities and the development of new business models for those active in the domain of citizenship and heritage. It’s for the first time — in this sense the partners are pioneers –they will work on such a large scale together on an integration of these three topics. Each partner is in the EU a leading institute in his field of expertise. They are convinced that sharing their good practices and knowledge will contribute to reveal the interconnectivity of (in)tangible heritage and European citizenship. The aim of this project is to assemble the most experienced educational institutes in the EU and their students in the field of entrepreneurship, heritage and citizenship. To quote Jody Jensen, director of the Institute for Social & European Studies (ISES), Köszeg, Hungary: “Untill now there is not such a thing as a collaboration between universities in the fields of European Culture, (in)tangible) Heritage and Citizenship. No field can be studied in isolation and requires an inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary approach. An academic course that brings together the business skills from the regular MBA programs with knowledge from culture, European studies, tangible and intangible heritage studies and citizenship education needs to be developed.”
partners: FUNDACION ACADEMIA EUROPEA E IBEROAMERICANA DE YUSTE (ES) , Fondazione Flaminia (IT) ,Institute for Social and European Studies (HU) , ALMA MATER STUDIORUM — UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA (IT) , STIFTUNG ZUKUNFT BERLIN (DE) , Stichting Amsterdam Summer University (NL) , STICHTING PAKHUIS DE ZWIJGER (NL)
Steve Austen (1944). Dr. h.c. Studied economics and has been active in the European public domain since 1966, concentrating on the arts,heritage, cultural policy, international cooperation, civil society issues and entrepreneurship.
As an entrepreneur and pioneer he started countless new initiatives mostly NGO’s and was responsible for a variety of international cultural festivals, film and TV productions, books, magazines and exhibitions including Berlin-Amsterdam/Amsterdam-Berlin in 1982/83 and La France aux Pays-Bas in 1985/86. He was co-author of Amsterdam Cultural Capital of Europe 1987. Created the informal working body Gulliver, in close cooperation with Günter Grass as well as the Felix Meritis Foundation, European Center for Arts, Culture & Science. Commissioned by a.o. the Universities of Amsterdam and Maastricht, he initiated the Amsterdam-Maastricht Summer University (1989) that most recently launched an MBA on Culture ,Heritage & Citizenship, in collaboration with NLBA, the Netherlands Business Academy( 2015). Austens’ contributions to the identity debate, international cultural policy and citizenship education programs have been published in newspapers, magazines and books in the Netherlands and abroad as well as through his TV portraits with leading European personalities. In 2004 he was asked to join the team of “A Soul for Europe” in Berlin as an expert to advise the curatorium under the presidency of Richard von Weiszäcker. He assisted in the rejuvenation of the initiative and now is member of the board of managers of this European legal body. ( EEIG ).
Bart Lommen is a research fellow at Netherlands Business Academy and responsible for the intellectual output of the ECHC Erasmus+ programme and for the programme management.
