During the last decade, probably as the result of the increasing professionalisation of the cultural sector and of the public finances crisis in Spain, Spanish cultural institutions got involved in more international cooperation networks and, in the European context, got awarded more European grants to get engaged in cooperation projects. The main funders have been Creative Europe, Horizon 2020 and Erasmus+ Programmes.
Regarding professional cooperation networks, the Sub Directorate-General for Museums of the Ministry of Culture and Sport and the Spanish Association of Cultural Heritage Managers take part in NEMO – Network of European Museum Organisations. The National Library of Spain, the Complutense University of Madrid, the University of Valencia, Dialnet, the University of Barcelona and the Basque Digital Library are members of The European Library. The Palau de la Música Catalana and the Auditorium of Barcelona are members of the network ECHO – European Concert Hall Organisations. Spanish entities and professionals are also represented in networks such as the EFA-European Festivals Association, Eurozine, RESEO, ENCATC, EBLIDA.
At the institutional level, the Reina Sofia National Museum and Art Centre, for example, is working on a new type of museum through its collaborations with networks that are not institutionalised in the conventional sense. The Network Southern Conceptualisms, comprised of a group of researchers and curators from all over Latin America, is collaborating with Reina Sofia to promote a new notion of shared heritage by generating a network of archives. The Foundation of the Commons brings together different political and cultural actors and groups and collaborates with Reina Sofia in the design of a new participative and transversal institutionality. L’Internationale proposes a new artistic, non-hierarchical and decentralized internationalism, based on the value of difference and horizontal interchange between a constellation of locally rooted and globally connected cultural agents. It is composed by six relevant European museums: Moderna galerija (MG, Ljubljana, Slovenia); Reina Sofia National Museum and Art Centre (MNCARS, Madrid, Spain); Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA, Barcelona, Spain); Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA, Antwerp, Belgium); SALT (Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey) and Van Abbemuseum (VAM, Eindhoven, the Netherlands). It also collaborates with academic institutions. Midstream is a collaborative project that seeks to analyse the role of audiences conceived not only as consumers but also as producers of content, in a context marked by the postmedia paradigm, the specificity of the production of contemporary artists and the new forms of cultural mediation. Also at the institutional level, the International Theatre Institute of the Mediterranean (IITM) aims to promote the production of performing arts, and other cultural projects, that develop and represent Mediterranean culture, fostering cultural exchange and solidarity among Mediterranean peoples involving 24 countries: 15 in Europe, 6 in Africa and 3 in the Eastern Mediterranean.
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