Our Manifesto

1. Researching, questioning, and reflecting upon our practices helps to collectively adapt, develop, and grow socially engaged practice within the cultural sector. It helps us to make sense of what we do, how we do it, and what the impact is.

2. Arts, cultural, and heritage organisations, practices, and research are not neutral. And the different experiences that shape us as professionals and people are significant to how we make sense of and do our work.

3. Theory and practice are intrinsically linked. We bring people together across the sector, and we recognise that people in various roles make meaningful contributions to the way we work.

4. We recognise and celebrate the messiness and unfinished-ness of practice and process. We don’t showcase finished, neat projects. We encourage people to be honest and critical and to sit with their questions.

5. The production and sharing of knowledge needs to be more inclusive. Everyone should have access to and be able to take part in the conversation.

6. We promote voices, perspectives, and ways of knowing that have traditionally been excluded or marginalised from the debate. We address the imbalance in what gets published, and we hope to represent the sector’s diversity, from different disciplines and across the globe.

7. We value different types of knowledge and research. We encourage contributors to share their knowledge, thoughts, experiences, and research in a variety of languages and in a variety of forms, such as interviews, collaboratively written articles, or visual contributions.

8. Culture Caleidoscoop is developed by, with, and for the sector so that we can stay relevant, representative, and of use.

9. We want to live our values by showing the messiness of our own journey. We are rethinking some of the traditional ways of producing a journal, and we are open about our own processes and learning. We might not get everything right all the time, and we welcome feedback along the way.