Mind The Gap project’s final conference will be arranged in Oslo 16th of June 2026 with the topic ‘Inclusion in Action’.
The call for presentations in open until 15th of January 2026!
About the project and conference
Mind the Gap is a Creative Europe supported project (2024-26) involving partners from Finland, Slovenia, Poland and Norway. The initiative promotes artistic and cultural education while fostering greater participation of children and youth across Europe. It builds cross-sectoral partnerships between culture and education to address key challenges impacting young people’s wellbeing. To our closing conference, we invite researchers and practitioners to share their insights on how to strengthen children and young people’s participation in the arts, and to learn from each other.
Arts and arts education can play a critical role for all children and young people – through formal, non-formal and informal education. UNESCO’s new framework (UNESCO, 2024) states the significant role of arts education in relation to contemporary challenges. The framework argues that arts education has the power to foster critical thinking, wellbeing and resilience, to strengthen democracy, belonging and cultural citizenship.
With this conference we ask: are arts and arts education ready to challenge themselves and their formats, work towards more inclusive designs and working methods, and thus step up and take the roles the UNESCO framework ascribes to it? Broad participation and inclusion of all children and young people is necessary to renew arts and arts education, and to contribute through the arts to tackle societal challenges. Child poverty, migration, war and climate crisis, marginalisation of groups and individuals, geopolitical tensions and intergenerational differences forge gaps in the societal tissue that binds us together and prevent the realisation of children’s cultural rights. How can the arts and arts education take part in repairing and recreating that strong social tissue?
Arts and arts educational formats, how co-creation is done in practice, barriers for participation and understandings of what quality is, must be revisited. The constant need to legitimise arts and arts education for policymakers in different European contexts, calls for strong relation-building and exchange between research, practice and policy to forge arts and arts education to contribute more knowledge about the role of arts and arts education in children and young people’s life.
Conference topics
- Cultural citizenship and creative participation – Arts and arts education as democratic processes
- Voicing children and young people’s experience through research, with a specific focus on marginalised groups
- Perspectives on policy development
- Inclusive formats – how can art education renew itself
- Who are the children and young people we try to include? Critical perspectives on stereotypes and preconceptions of target groups.
- Diversity, inclusion and quality – critical approaches to practice and discourse in art education
- The role of art and art education in children and young people’ s life: Arts, wellbeing and resilience
- Experimental expressions representing diverse bodies and minds
- Expanded approaches on the senses in arts and arts education
Hosting institution
Kulturtanken – Arts for Young Audiences Norway is a government agency responsible for the arts and culture for children and youth in Norway. Kulturtanken reports to the Ministry of Culture and Equality and cooperates closely with The Ministry of Education and Research.