Access all the components of Not a toolkit! and find out more about it here.

The principles of cultural relations, which aim to build fair partnerships by practising mutual listening and learning and engaging in dialogue, co-creation, and joint capacity building, form the basis of EUNIC’s work in line with the EU strategic approach for international cultural relations. But what does fair collaboration mean? The EUNIC General Assembly in December 2019 made a collective commitment for EUNIC to explore this topic further.

Accordingly, a group of experts was commissioned to work on a toolkit on fair collaboration in cultural relations through an open call for proposals. The ambition was to create tools specifically targeted at colleagues working in EUNIC members and beyond in order to facilitate fair practices by providing concrete ideas, recommendations and instruments for working in the field of cultural relations with partners in local settings in a fair way.

Following a design-led and user-centred approach and feeding on a vast research process including a survey, a series of roundtables, interviews and several feedback rounds with a dedicated advisory board of EUNIC members, the final components of what became Not a toolkit! are now available here.

Not a toolkit! aims to raise awareness about fair practices in cultural relations, and asks pertinent questions which individuals, professionals and organisations operating within a system should ask themselves to challenge and improve practices, policies and procedures when engaging in cultural relations activities.

The experts who authored Not a toolkit! are Matina Magkou, Avril Joffe, Anna Steinkamp, Cristina Farinha, Katelijn Verstraete, and Sudebi Thakurata along with D.epicentre as the design partner.