RAN LOCAL Working Group meeting - How can arts, civic pride and culture contribute to boosting local resilience and democracy against extremism, hate crimes and other threats to democracy?, Milan 28-29 September 2023

Art is a powerful form of communication. It has the unique ability to convey information, provoke dialogue, touch people’s emotions, and make political and social statements free from bias and judgement. Ideally, a strong civic culture with shared values lies at the heart of a resilient and peaceful democratic community in which art forms are accepted and used to promote its principles.

The objective of this final RAN LOCAL meeting of the year was to explore the extent to which local authorities can leverage art and culture as instruments for preventing and countering various forms of (violent) extremism, as well as boosting local resilience in order to prevent other phenomena threatening a democratic system like hate crimes, political violence and polarisation.

In an era marked by the complexities of extremist ideologies and challenges to democratic principles, understanding the role of artistic and cultural approaches, often seen as forms for “soft power”  in international relations, in the hands of local authorities becomes vital to advocate for values like inclusivity, promotion of diversity and tolerance rather than promoting a concrete anti-extremism approach.

The key outcomes were the following:

• As local authorities it is important to understand the possibilities of arts and build and maintain strong relationships with artists and cultural entrepreneurs as they are the key to actual access, outreach and trust in targeted communities. And trust them to allow their artistic freedom to create the authenticity it requires to get targeted communities on board.

• Preventing extremism without saying “extremism”. Prevention of extremism is the ultimate goal of involving arts and culture in an approach on preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) programme. In many cases, however, an artistic or cultural approach does not even mention the words prevention or extremism, nor hate or polarisation, but focuses more on critical thinking, sense of belonging and identity. It is therefore important for local authorities to recognise this and not make their expectations of a project too concrete. Art evokes emotion and emotion leads to engagement. Both can take you anywhere you can imagine. Make way for the artistic approach.

• Reframe success. Framing the conversation is helpful when artistic and cultural actors need mandates and resources for their projects. Funding is often linked to a specific civil and/or political need and expectation of what dictates as a success. Producing a theatre play might not sound so appealing for policymakers to spend public money on. Training P/CVE practitioners and involving (former) extremists to tell their story as a reference to concrete preventive measures already sounds more appealing.