Where Theatre Meets Policy

The European Theatre Forums (ETF) are high-level theatre and policy events, co-organised by ETC and the European Commission. 

Part of the Commission’s ‘European Theatre Initiative’, the Forums bring together hundreds of artists, theatre leaders and policy makers for discussions on how to make Europe’s theatre sector more sustainable, equitable and better equipped to face future challenges. 

There have been two European Theatre Forums: 

 

• The European Theatre Forum “Envisioning the Way Forward” : More than 200 artists, theatre leaders and policy makers attended the event at JK Opole Theatre/Poland. Their needs and priorities were collected in The Opole Recommendations — a roadmap for changes that European institutions should make to support European Theatre by 2027. Held from 11-13 May 2023. 

 

• The European Theatre Forum: European Performing Arts in Focus : 150 policymakers, artists, theatre-makers, theatre & performing arts structures gathered for the event, which was switched to a virtual venue due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Organised as part of the German EU Council Presidency, and in cooperation with the European Commission and the German Minister of State for Culture and the Media, the event resulted in the Dresden Declaration document with suggestions for the future of the sector. Held from 11-13 November 2020. 

History

In 2017, ETC made the case to the European Commission that theatre needed more visibility across the continent. With its new mandate as a strategic partner of the European Commission, ETC was well-placed to contribute to a structuring and professionalisation of the European Theatre sector. As part of this work, ETC formed partnerships with the networks Pearle* and Opera Europa to collaborate on joint policy initiatives for the sector. 

In 2018, six prominent European theatre networks met for the first time in Bratislava, Slovakia, during the ETC International Theatre Conference. As a result, ETC issued a call for the creation of a European Theatre Forum and for its inclusion in the Creative Europe successor programme. The call was received and in 2019 the European Commission announced the inclusion of specific support for theatre and a European Theatre Forum in its work programme for Creative Europe 2020. 

On the invitation of the European Commission, the European Theatre Expert Group, consisting of 11 European theatre and performing arts networks, had their first exploratory meeting in November 2019 in Brussels, Belgium. The results from a map of challenges in the European theatre sector, conducted by the European Expert Network on Culture and Audiovisual (EENCA) were presented to the networks which stated the need for a European Theatre Forum to help the sector overcome its fragmentation.

2020 saw the fruition of the European Theatre Forum during the German EU Council Presidency. ETC, together with ITI Germany and Bundesverband der freien darstellenden Künste formed the Initiative Group, and ETC was announced as the project coordinator. The networks of the European Theatre Expert Group were invited to form a Consortium Group with the joint responsibility of formulating the agenda of key issues facing the theatre and performing arts sector today. The event, European Theatre Forum 2020: European Performing Arts in Focus was funded by the German Minister of State for Culture and Media, the European Commission and ETC. Owing to the coronavirus pandemic, the event was switched from in-person to online, in a fully virtual version of the original host location, the Staatsschauspiel Dresden. 

In 2023, the second edition of the European Theatre Forum took place, at JK Opole Theatre. Entitled “Envisioning the Way Forward”, it set out three goals for theatre to remain relevant for the future. These were: 

1) Address the geopolitical and climate-related crises and their implications for the sector.

2) Address sustainable, digital and social challenges and practices in the sector.

3) Develop and adopt a comparable sustainability assessment tool for the whole sector to measure and reduce its carbon footprint.