East Satellite BEYOND
Community Engagement
Governance
Learning & Education
Programme & ProjectEast Satellite BEYOND – Between Neighbours: Crossing Voices, Crossing Borders was a three-day gathering in Istanbul bringing together artists, cultural professionals, researchers, policymakers and civil society actors from across Europe and the Eastern neighbourhood. Organised by Culture Unleashed and Space-time Works in partnership with Anadolu Kültür, İKSV, Postane, and Roof, in collaboration with Culture Action Europe, powered by Alliance for Socially Engaged Arts, and co-funded by the European Union.
BEYOND is Culture Action Europe’s core strategic framework for reflection, active listening and joint advocacy across Europe’s cultural and creative sectors. More than a series of events, BEYOND provides an ongoing process for co-creation and consultation, creating space to explore bold visions for the future of culture while advancing principles such as cultural democracy, cultural rights and ethical leadership. In 2025, Culture Action Europe developed a new structure for BEYOND, connecting two complementary formats: Central BEYOND, the biennial flagship gathering and Satellite BEYOND, a series of decentralised regional gatherings hosted by CAE members and geographical hubs in different parts of Europe. Satellite BEYONDs create spaces for dialogue, experimentation, capacity-building and radical imagination rooted in local realities while strengthening the connections between these experiences and EU-level advocacy.
In 2026, six Satellite BEYOND gatherings took place across Europe, including the East Satellite BEYOND in Istanbul, representing the East region of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Türkiye. As a member of Culture Action Europe, Culture Unleashed became a part of this wider European cultural network and its collective processes of reflection and advocacy through the East Satellite BEYOND. Culture Unleashed’s contribution extended across the full project cycle: concept development, programme curation, research, and preparation, facilitation, community building, event delivery and reflection.
Hosting East Satellite BEYOND in Istanbul offered Culture Unleashed an opportunity to bring the BEYOND framework into the specific context of the region, while also bringing regional experiences, perspectives and priorities back into the wider European conversation. In this sense, Between Neighbours: Crossing Voices, Crossing Border was both a regional gathering and part of a broader European process: connecting cultural actors working in the region with the wider CAE network, and contributing situated knowledge and experiences to European cultural policy discussions.
The event focused on Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye, creating a space to explore how cultural practice can contribute to dialogue, solidarity and democratic life in a region shaped by unresolved conflicts, fragile peace, cultural silences and increasing pressure on artistic freedom. Held between 4–6 May 2026, the gathering brought together 73 participants from 17 countries.
The programme was structured around the idea of “Between Neighbours” and the question of how voices and borders can be crossed through cultural practice. Its methodology combined workshops, discussions, presentations, networking events, and site visits. This allowed participants to move between personal experience, professional practice and broader political and cultural questions. The programme included sessions such as Bingo! – First Connection Through Play, Unresolved, Unavoidable: Cultural Practice in Tension, From Regional Roots to Routes from the Region, and conversations examining cultural democracy, conflict, artistic freedom and regional cooperation.
Emre Erbirer led the overall conceptual and programme development process together with the wider organising team. Drawing on his experience in cultural management, programme curation, community building, learning design and facilitation, Emre worked on translating the initial idea into a programme that could hold complex and sometimes difficult conversations without reducing them to conventional panel discussions. He also co-facilitated “Unresolved, Unavoidable: Cultural Practice in Tension” with Mustafa Gül and delivered the opening welcome on behalf of Culture Unleashed.
Dr. Mustafa Gül contributed his experience in cultural policy, regional development, creative industries and research to the programme. His role was particularly important in connecting cultural practice with wider questions of place, policy and regional transformation. Together with Emre, he facilitated the session “Unresolved, Unavoidable: Cultural Practice in Tension”, creating a space for participants to examine the contradictions and difficult choices that cultural practitioners face when working within politically and socially complex environments.
Burcu Yılmaz Deniz contributed to the participatory and community-building dimension of the gathering. As a facilitator, she co-designed and facilitated “Bingo! – First Connection Through Play” with Cemre Ceren Asarlı from Space-time Works. The session deliberately used play as a method for breaking down barriers between participants, encouraging informal encounters and establishing the relational foundations for the conversations that followed. Her contribution reflected Culture Unleashed’s broader emphasis on designing conditions in which communities can form through meaningful interaction rather than treating networking as an incidental outcome.
The result was a gathering that prioritised relationships over representation and dialogue over consensus. Instead of attempting to provide definitive answers to the political and cultural challenges facing the region, East Satellite BEYOND created the conditions for participants to encounter different perspectives, recognise shared tensions and identify possibilities for future cooperation. The conversations continued beyond the formal programme through visits to cultural and memory institutions in Istanbul, including Postane, DEPO and the 23,5 Hrant Dink Site of Memory, connecting the regional discussions with local experiences of memory, participation and socially engaged cultural practice.
For Culture Unleashed, East Satellite BEYOND was not simply an event to be delivered, but a process of community building, collective discussion and programme development with a curatorial approach. We have worked on the programme for approximately six months, developing its conceptual framework, identifying contributors, shaping sessions and methodologies, and connecting the different elements into a coherent journey. Rather than positioning Istanbul as a destination for an international cultural gathering, Culture Unleashed approached the city as a meeting point between neighbouring contexts, using the event to create opportunities for people who rarely share the same spaces to encounter one another, exchange experiences and develop new relationships.
