This article presents and briefly analyses three recent stories from three different regional contexts in Europe that demonstrate the positive impact of innovating connections with the audience. It discusses the values of hybrid approaches to arts and culture marketing, and the benefit of resilient practices of co-creation and cross-sectoral collaboration.

The pandemic has brought a lot of challenges to trainings and programs dedicated to the organization of culture. An experience from Brazil shows how such programs can adapt to their theoretical and practical character to digital formats.

Artistic places that distinguished themselves by their independence now do not only face precarity, but permanent closure. Nonetheless, independent places are essential for the artistic world and for developing new artistic expressions. Therefore, it is of highest interest to understand how these places are doing, in the face of the pandemic.

In recent months, most European countries have highlighted the value of art and culture and taken measures to reduce the impact of the pandemic on the sector, albeit to very different degrees.

Many arts and cultural institutions are open again. But the visitors are still absent and also the employees are not necessarily comfortable. During our Arts Management Webinar on October 14th at 2 pm CEST Leah Hamilton will explain how to give them back the feeling of safety.

Arts institutions across the globe have begun their re-opening process and it is apparent that just because officials announce it is safe to re-open, visitors and staff might not feel safe participating. How can we change that feeling?

The pandemic changes many aspects of the publicly funded cultural infrastructures of Western countries, that much is certain. However, for the changes to move in a positive direction, cultural professionals and politicians have to confront themselves with uncomfortable questions.

One of the most distinctive outcomes of the crisis for the cultural sector is that it shrunk the global to fit our computer screens and made local events resound globally. The digital or immaterial became tangible, substituting for what we previously enjoyed as physical and proximate.

We are living in the collision of two pandemics. The coronavirus crisis collided with the ancient, global and persistent pandemic of racism. In recent weeks, amid the COVID-19 crisis in several countries, thousands of people have taken the streets to reaffirm that #BlackLivesMatter. Now the demonstrations advance inside arts institutions, which will be forced to reflect on which side they are from when it comes to racial equity (and more).

In early April, the English foundation NESTA published a comprehensive analysis of the likely impacts of COVID-19 on the world whose title is short and direct: There will be no 'back to normal'. Not returning to normal does not mean that there will be no future for humanity and within it for the cultural sector. But it means it can be radically different from what we thought. In the first of a series of three articles, I try to explain why the creative sector will be globally (but not equally) affected and what can we expect.