ArtisticMinds Cultural Living Hub Poland. A space for inclusive creativity is launching in Poland

Since July 2026, CRAVE Music Agency has been coordinating the Polish ArtisticMinds Cultural Living Hub – a local ecosystem connecting culture, mentoring, competence development and digital tools. It will not, however, be a single venue with a fixed address and a set programme. The Polish Hub operates in a flexible Outreach & Pop-Up model, and its first public activities already began in August.

ArtisticMinds is entering its next phase. After months of research, meetings with experts, workshops and work on educational tools, the project is moving ever more firmly from preparation to practice.

One of its key results is the network of ArtisticMinds Cultural Living Hubs being set up in five partner countries. The Polish Hub is coordinated by CRAVE Music Agency, with its organisational base in Warsaw.

A hub – not necessarily a single building

When we say “hub”, it is easiest to picture a specific space – a workshop room, a studio or a cultural centre. In ArtisticMinds, the idea is broader.

A Cultural Living Hub is meant to be, above all, a local ecosystem that connects young creators, mentors, culture-sector experts, community organisations, institutions and digital tools. Its role is to enable creative growth, new competences, participation in culture and building relationships with the creative community.

That is why the Polish Hub will operate in a Partner-Led, Outreach & Pop-Up model. CRAVE is responsible for its coordination, but individual activities can take place in different locations – in the spaces of partner institutions and organisations, at pop-up events, and online.

This model is explicitly foreseen in the Typology Report developed within the project. Outreach & Pop-Up Hubs can use temporary spaces, cooperate with existing institutions and reach participants where permanent infrastructure is not needed or justified.

Who is the Polish Hub for?

The main group of participants are young artists aged 18-25 with intellectual disabilities and/or neurodivergent profiles, including people on the autism spectrum or with dyslexia.

But a much wider network is meant to grow around them. The Hub’s activities will also involve:

• artists and experts of the culture and creative sectors,
• mentors,
• educators and creative practitioners,
• specialists in accessibility and participant support,
• community and cultural organisations,
• public and educational institutions,
• families and caregivers.

So this is not just about organising a few workshops. It is about creating an environment where different competences meet around one goal: a greater and more active participation of young people with diverse needs in culture and the creative sector.

From inspiration to your own creative work

One of the most important activities delivered within the Hubs will be the ArtisticMinds Cultural and Creative Model Programme. The programme guides participants through the successive stages of the creative process. First comes contact with art and culture and the search for inspiration. Then participants develop their own stories and ideas, move on to creating artistic works, and finally present them to a wider audience.

In practice, this means, among other things:

• visits to places connected with culture,
• working with mentors,
• storytelling and activities using digital tools,
• creative workshops,
• work on participants’ own artistic projects,
• events and public presentations of the programme’s results.

Art in the project is not limited to a single discipline. Participants can work with, among others, visual art, storytelling, performance, theatre and digital music. That last area is particularly close to CRAVE and our agency’s experience.

Accessibility from the start, not as an add-on

One of the core assumptions of the Polish Hub is designing activities so that accessibility does not appear only once someone reports a specific problem. The Typology Report points, among other things, to the need for accessible and understandable communication, attention to sensory needs, the availability of quiet spaces, and adapting the way activities are run to participants’ individual needs.

That is why we will verify the accessibility of every venue chosen for Hub activities, and in-person events will also include a quiet, low-stimulation space.

Equally important are the principles concerning consent, privacy and how participants are presented. ArtisticMinds is built on continuous informed consent, respect for authorship and creative autonomy, and each participant’s right to decide whether and how they want to be visible in materials, documentation and public presentations.

July: building the structure. From August: going public

The Polish ArtisticMinds Cultural Living Hub has been operating since July 2026. The first weeks are above all an organisational stage: adapting the European Hub model to the Polish context, defining its operating and accessibility principles, building a local stakeholder network and preparing the programme for the coming months.

The first public activities began in August. The Hub’s first season will include:

• a free training course with certificates of participation (August, online) – around 15 hours of workshops for culture-sector experts and professionals working with young people with intellectual disabilities and neurodivergent people: how to bring art, culture and digital tools into work that supports mental well-being,
• a webinar on accessibility in music and digital distribution (September) – how to release and promote music so that it reaches everyone, plus a showcase of the project’s digital tools,
• creative workshops with digital tools (autumn-winter) – young artists paired with industry mentors: cultural visits, digital comics, digital art works,
• a Live Exhibition (spring 2027) – a public showcase of participants’ work and the finale of the mentoring programme; the most talented will present their works at the international final production in Cyprus.

The network of five national Living Hubs will run regular activities until the end of the project – and beyond it: ArtisticMinds is designed so that the Hubs become a lasting part of their local communities and outlive the project itself. In Poland, we have planned the programme’s first season until June 2027.

What’s next?

The coming months will focus on launching the next elements of the programme in Poland – working with mentors and young artists, cultural and creative activities, and building cooperation with organisations and experts who want to support a more accessible culture sector.

If you are a musician or a creative-industry professional who would like to try the role of a mentor, if you work with young people with intellectual disabilities and are looking for new tools, or if you run an institution or organisation that would like to join the workshops – write to us: [email protected].

We will keep showing the next stages of the Polish Hub, the people involved in its activities and the results of participants’ work. Because in the end, a Living Hub is not meant to be another project that exists only in presentations and documentation. It is meant to be a place – physical, digital, or sometimes simply created for a few hours – where you can genuinely meet other people, make something of your own and have the space to take part in culture on your own terms.

ArtisticMinds – Promoting inclusivity and accessibility of the Culture & Creative Sector through digital and social innovation (No. 101173645) is co-funded by the European Union under the Creative Europe programme. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission.