Long Live Arts Manifesto – Feel the Arts!

Cultural participation and education make an important contribution to living in dignity in old age and to discovering and exploiting one’s own potential. All of Europe is affected by demographic change and European societies are getting older. For a positive and intergenerational perspective on these changes, a new policy is needed that sees the artistic-cultural participation of older people as an opportunity. For this, the cultural, social and health sectors must work together.

On the initiative of the Dutch foundation consortium Lang leve Kunst, a European partnership has been established with Long Live Arts, which includes partners from Belgium and Great Britain as well as kubia as the German representative. Long Live Arts worked to promote cultural participation in old age in practice, policy, research and education. The aim was to put the topic on European agendas and to win over as many European actors as possible from the fields of art, culture, health and social services to integrate cultural education and participation in old age into their policies and work.

At the end of the two-year initiative, the Long Live Arts Manifesto was presented at the Creative Dinner at the BOZAR arts center in Brussels in April 2016.