Training for the Contact Zone (TCZ)
TCZ will develop and test training materials for professionals, artists, cultural mediators, staff, and volunteers in the heritage sector. Our aim is to equip cultural practitioners with new skills in participatory and intercultural approaches, enabling them to create more inclusive, engaging, and future-oriented practices.
The TCZ project brings together a diverse partnership of organisations across Europe:
- Culture Action Europe (BE) – Networking & knowledge sharing
- Conexiones improbables (ES) – Curriculum development & pilot in Vitoria
- Etz Hayyim Synagogue (GR) – Training on interculturality
- Goethe-Institut (RO) – Communication & pilot in Bucharest
- Humán Platform (HU) – Training on post-communism
- PELE (PT) – Training on post-colonialism
- H 401 (NL) – Project management & pilot in Amsterdam
TCZ empowers cultural and heritage staff to create new forms of activities that strengthen cultural belonging. Through innovative curricula and training, it enhances professionals’ knowledge, skills, and confidence, helping them to:
- Develop dialogue-based approaches;
- Co-create narratives with communities;
- Explore dynamic new ways of presenting heritage—from virtual storytelling to participatory projects across Europe.
TCZ builds on the experience of the Heritage Contact Zone (HCZ) project (2018–2020), funded under the European Year of Cultural Heritage. One of HCZ’s major outcomes—the HCZ Toolkit, a free online handbook—laid the groundwork for this new initiative.
Training for the Contact Zone is co-funded by the European Union within the framework of Erasmus+ Adult Education.
Training for the Contact Zones in Practice: Cultural Democracy, Dialogue, and Structural Change
2–3 December 2025
Goethe-Institut Bucharest
This international conference explores how cultural and heritage work can respond to Europe’s rising political polarisation, shrinking civic spaces, and distrust in democracy. Using the Contact Zone framework—spaces where diverse identities and perspectives meet—it highlights how dialogue and cultural mediation can foster mutual understanding, inclusive participation, and collective agency.
The event presents insights from the Training in the Contact Zone (TCZ) project, which developed and tested a curriculum equipping practitioners with practical tools for navigating complexity and difference.
Participants will:
- Reflect on polarisation’s impact on culture and heritage.
- Explore and apply the TCZ curriculum.
- Discuss strengthening cultural democracy and civic engagement.
- Consider how TCZ methods can inform policy and structural change.
The conference is both a culmination of a year-long cross-border collaboration and a launch toward future advocacy. It invites cultural practitioners, policymakers, and institutions to reimagine arts and heritage spaces as Contact Zones: not neutral grounds, but transformative spaces where difference is engaged and shared futures are shaped.