One year of Shared Visions: Building a Sustainable and Inclusive Cooperative for Visual Artists in Europe
Shared Visions is a four-year European project that explores how artists, activists and cultural workers can collaboratively develop sustainable and democratically governed infrastructures for the visual arts. Researcher Sepp Eckenhaussen participates in the project on behalf of CARADT, alongside partners from Serbia, Montenegro, Ukraine, Portugal, Italy, and Belgium. As the first year of the project has come to an end, we are happy to share some highlights.
International kick-off in Belgrade
In the final week of April 2025, all project partners convened in Belgrade for the official launch of Shared Visions. The kick-off meeting focused on building relationships, sharing practices and laying the groundwork for a common trajectory. Artists, activists and researchers came together to discuss collective approaches to artistic work and the organisational principles required to support them.
You can also read Dina Gligo’s report of the gathering: Hive of Queens
Cultural publishing as a commons: A local meetup in Amsterdam
As part of Shared Visions, local meetups are regularly organised different places (mostly in the Balkans, but also in Berlin and Italy). At CARADT, we hosted the public event “The Coop in Your Head: How to Sustain Cultural Publishing as a Commons?” at Post-Office in Amsterdam on 11 July 2025, in collaboration withHumDrumPress and the Institute of Network Cultures.
Event: The Co-op in Your Head: How to Sustain Cultural Publishing as a Commons?
At this local meetup, cultural publishers and art workers discussed the question of how cultural publishing can function as a commons, beyond market-based mechanisms or institutional subsidy structures. Participants shared concrete examples, prototypes and working models, highlighting the role of community-based funding, shared ownership and participatory decision-making in sustaining publishing practices.
In the past year, the Shared Visions consortium has set up a blog and published several texts. These publications include thematic reflections, meeting reports, future plans, and theoretical analysis. Some highlights are:
An overview of these publications is also included on the Shared Visions project page.
Shared Visions
Shared visions is a groundbreaking initiative to establish a transnational cooperative for visual artists – a democratic, solidarity-based structure committed to reshaping how artists live, work, and organize, especially in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and across wider international contexts. It brings together an international team of visual artists, cultural operators, humanities scholars, web3 practitioners, and activists in a long and intensive series of activities that runs from January 2025 until October 2028.
‘‘How will our graduates make a living without selling their soul?’’
Sepp Eckenhaussen, arts researcher and organizer, explores sustainable economic models for the arts at CARADT. He addresses the art sector’s precarity through activism, policy, and digital culture
The research group Cultural and Creative Industries investigates the role of artists and designers as creative innovators and drivers of social and economic change. Affiliated researchers analyse the cultural and creative industries from a critical point of view and examine the conditions under which timely forms of aesthetic expression and social connectedness can actually take place within the precarious reality of this field. What economic models are required by artists and designers to create a meaningful practice within the aesthetic, social, and economic intentions of the cultural and creative industries? What skills sets are required for those artists and designers who don’t just want to follow movements, but actually shape novel social and economic models of the future?
