A consortium of 10 partners across 6 countries. Aim: accessibility of the culture, arts and film sectors for young people with intellectual disabilities. Virtual kick-off — January 13–14, 2025.
What ArtisticMinds is
ArtisticMinds (action 101173645) is a Creative Europe Cooperation project with a clearly defined aim: to increase and promote the participation of young people with intellectual disabilities in the culture, arts and film sectors — both as performers and as audience members.
The premise goes beyond the classical idea of accessibility as physical accommodation (lifts, audio description). It’s about active participation: how a young person with an intellectual disability can be an artist, a curator, a co-creator of programming — not just an audience member in a specially designated row. That’s a shift in logic, not just infrastructure.
In that sense, ArtisticMinds resembles the “social inclusion through arts” projects familiar from the Creative Europe portfolio, but with a tighter and stronger focus: a specific group, specific sectors (CCI), specific tools (toolkits, mapping, training).
The consortium: 10 partners, 6 countries
- Christos Stelios Ioannou Foundation (Cyprus) — coordinator
- Emphasys Centre (Cyprus)
- Fondazione Aida ETS (Italy)
- AIAS Bologna onlus (Italy)
- ARTIT (Greece)
- EEA Margarita — Ergastiri Eidikis Agogis Margarita (Greece)
- Tomasz Polit / CRAVE Music Agency (Poland)
- Instituto de Gestores y Programadores Culturales de la Región de Murcia (Spain)
- upProject — UP Project Gestión de Proyectos (Spain)
- CONNECT International A.I.S.B.L. (Belgium)
Six countries: Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Poland, Spain, Belgium. A southern-European tilt, with Poland as the lone partner from our part of the region. The Polish side is handled by CRAVE — in this project under Tomasz Polit’s sole proprietorship (in line with CRAVE’s formal structure).
Kick-off — January 13–14, 2025, virtual
The two-day Kick-off Meeting ran online. Standard fare for a first consortium meeting:
- presentations from each partner organisation — who we are, why we’re in the project
- discussion of project goals, roadmap, key milestones
- alignment on roles, Work Package distribution, timeline
- reporting, working methodology, communication tools
A virtual kick-off has its upsides (logistics, speed) and downsides (less room for the informal conversations that often produce the most important decisions). In this case the consortium opted for online as the opening format; in-person meetings are scheduled for later stages.
What CRAVE does in ArtisticMinds
CRAVE in ArtisticMinds is responsible, among other things, for music-related activities and for project communications on the Polish market. Concrete deliverables will land within the individual WPs — we’ll write about them here on Backstage as they’re produced.
The Polish side’s first public moment is scheduled for May 28, 2025 — the ArtisticMinds inauguration in Warsaw with an art therapy workshop at Sztukarnia.
What’s next
From the consortium’s side: the operational start of WP1 (project management), first deliverables in WP2 (research, mapping). On the public side: communications materials, partner profiles, thematic infographics on artisticminds.eu and on social media.
Backstage will keep updating the project’s progress — particularly the Polish side and the strands in which CRAVE is directly involved.
Discover the project and its Polish events
10 partners from 6 European countries working towards a more inclusive cultural sector. The first public event on the Polish side will be the inauguration at Sztukarnia — May 28, 2025.