Applications will be considered on the basis of:

1. Advocacy experience and engagement: the nature of your current experience with advocacy, whether through your organisation, network, artistic practice or another professional role.
2. A concrete case to work on: the clarity and relevance of the advocacy goal, challenge or situation you would bring to the School. It does not need to be fully developed; the point of the School is to help you sharpen it.
3. Motivation and commitment to the full programme: participants must be available for all five sessions and willing to engage actively throughout the process.

We welcome participants from around the world, while recognising the limitations posed by time zones and the programme’s predominantly Europe-focused content. This reflects the area of our expertise and the starting point from which we have developed this first edition of the IETM Advocacy school.

The first session establishes the foundations. What do we actually mean by advocacy? Where does it begin, and why has it become increasingly important for the cultural sector?

A conversation with Alberto Alemanno will open the School by looking at advocacy as a way of engaging with power and influencing decisions. We will then situate this discussion within today’s cultural policy environment, looking critically at the narratives used to argue why culture matters, including the opportunities and traps they create.

Participants will then turn to their own advocacy challenges. Through an interactive exercise, they will begin sharpening what exactly they want to change. Particular attention will be given to distinguishing a broad aspiration from an advocacy goal, and to connecting long-term ambitions with achievable short- and medium-term objectives.

Guest speaker: 

Alberto Alemanno is Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law at HEC Paris and founder of The Good Lobby, an organisation dedicated to strengthening civil society's capacity to influence public decision-making. 

Advocacy does not happen only among people who already support your cause. How do we communicate when cultural funding is questioned, familiar arguments are challenged, or a conversation becomes polarised?

The session will examine different advocacy postures, including defensive, responsive and confident advocacy. Participants will explore how to recognise recurring arguments, avoid being pulled into an unnecessarily defensive position, and reframe conversations around their own goals and values.

Katherine Heid will lead a practical session on countering recurring arguments and reducing defensiveness, connecting this directly to participants' own advocacy cases and messages. 

Guest speaker: 

Katherine Heid is a cultural policy expert, systemic coach and change manager with extensive experience at the intersection of culture and politics. Her previous roles include leadership positions at Culture Action Europe, RESEO and the Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft.

Advocacy often means speaking to people who do not share our assumptions, priorities or ways of seeing the world. In this four-hour workshop, Charlélie Jourdan will explore how storytelling can help bridge that gap: making an issue understandable and relevant without oversimplifying it or assuming prior agreement.

Participants will learn how to identify what may be preventing an audience from connecting with an idea, structure a story that builds understanding and interest, and communicate their advocacy goals in ways that resonate with people outside their immediate field or community. The session will be highly practical, with participants applying the approach to their own advocacy cases and experimenting with how the same issue can be told differently for different audiences.

Guest trainer: 

Charlélie Jourdan is a communication trainer helping specialists explain ideas clearly to decision-makers, funders and non-specialist audiences. He began his career at the European Parliament, where he saw how technical complexity could undermine otherwise strong proposals. Since then, he has worked with organisations including the European Parliament, European Commission, WWF and a range of European research institutions. 

Strong arguments alone rarely produce political change. Advocacy depends on understanding who has power, who influences them, where support already exists and where relationships can be built.

After a brief input, participants will engage in exercises to map stakeholders around their own advocacy goals using tools such as the Spectrum of Allies. 

Furthermore, a conversation with two former politicians —  Rosa Meriläinen and Julie Ward — will bring in the perspective from the other side of advocacy: how policymakers experience approaches from the cultural sector, what makes an advocacy relationship credible, what tends to work, and what does not. Short case studies will then show different advocacy strategies in practice.

In the final part of the session, two or three external guests will share concrete advocacy cases and examples of good practice in the plenary, before joining smaller breakout groups for more focused conversations about how those cases unfolded, what made them effective, and what participants can learn from them. 

Guest speakers: 

Rosa Meriläinen combines direct political experience as a former member of the Finnish Parliament with many years of professional cultural advocacy, including as Secretary General of KULTA. 

Julie Ward is a former Member of the European Parliament who served on its Culture and Education Committee. Before entering politics, she had a long career as an arts practitioner.

Presenters of advocacy stories (to be confirmed)

The final session brings all learnings acquired through the four-day journey. Participants will return to the advocacy issues they brought into the School and use the 8-Step Roadmap to Action to identify what happens next: clarifying the desired change, identifying the people who can make it happen, understanding the environment, mapping resources and allies, shaping strategic messages, finding the right timing, evaluating progress and preparing their next step or cycle of advocacy. 

The School closes with a collective reflection: Where am I now? What has changed in how I understand my advocacy challenge? And what is the first thing I will do after the School?

Participants leave with their own emerging advocacy roadmap, as well as with the peer knowledge, connections and practical tools gathered across the five sessions.