Operation City from Zagreb, Asociacija, društvo nevladnih organizacij in posameznikov na področju kulture from Ljubljana and Lumbardhi Foundation from Prizren started their work on the joint two-year project OPE.N - Operation Nova: Re-imagining Cultural Spaces in a New European Context.
The project brings together a consortium of 3 organisations from 3 countries in Europe (Croatia, Slovenia, Kosovo) driven by a strong common interest in tackling issues related to independent cultural spaces.
The project kick-off in Ljubljana marked an official beginning of the project and all working packages were discussed, including: Research & Innovation or “Dispel the Fog of Status Quo, Artist/Cultural Worker-In-Residency Program or “The Iris of the Reticent, Knowledge-Exchange and Advocacy or “The Reimagined Blueprint".
The spaces in which cultural organisations work, produce, create, re-imagine and re-shape have always been an essential part of their programmatic development and organisational sustainability. Unlike other typical places for work, spaces for organisations in culture have played a different, more significant role, as they are also spaces in which art and culture come to life and/or present themselves to the audience and the community. It is because of this unique role that spaces possess in the field of arts and culture that conversations surrounding cultural spaces have always had a more significant tone and have always opened up and led to discussions that surpass the spaces themselves and touch upon issues of the importance of culture, the importance of cultural producers and artists and the role they play in (local) communities, as well the impact culture can have on said communities.
It is through a joint re-imagining, questioning the status quo, exchange and mobility of these various international cultural and artistic actors that we want to re-establish cultural spaces as spaces where vitaly important points converge: 1) they are central places for a critically and aesthetically relevant cultural and artistic production, 2) they are silent defiers to an ever-growing pressure to gentrify and commodify public infrastructure thus contributing to a sustainable urban transformation, 3) they have the ability to bring together all of the local community, heterogeneous and diverse, and are a place of empowered participatory governance.