Musagetes Cafés are an open forum for the circulation of ideas that lead to social action and cultural change.

The Conceptual Basis for the Program

A café is a meeting place where ideas become actions; it is a public forum facilitating collections of conversations around a scattering of tables. The discussions that take place are extra-institutional, unscripted and ideal for the exploration of alternative perspectives and unusual lines of argument. For a café, free-flowing conversation is its purpose.

Throughout history, cafés have been at the centre of cultural shifts. The open flow of ideas in the piazzas of Florence and Venice and the coffeeshop meetings of the 1800s all led directly and unequivocally to actual social change and concrete results. It is not possible to separate the idea exchange of the café from the implementation of social action that follows.

The open exchange and debate that took place in these uninhibited public spaces all led to enduring contributions to humanity. The free flow of ideas was a critical precursor to the progress achieved during these moments in civilization. And it is therefore not an exaggeration to envision the Café as a viable forum for pursuing solutions to today's most troubling problems. The Café can become more than a collecting point for a broad spectrum of ideas. It can also become the model of how changes required by the 21st century can take place.

London and Barcelona Cafés

In January 2007, Musagetes organized the London Café, hosted by Jude Kelly, that brought together a number of prominent artist-creators and cultural thinkers from the UK, Europe and Canada who had in common an engagement with extending the contribution the arts make to healthy democracies and creative communities. In their Letter from London, the participants suggested that the most fruitful approach to the integration of the arts in society would be a strong endorsement of human and civic rights. Since that time, the foundation has been engaged in a number of pilot projects and partnerships that promote the arts and social action and has identified the environment and intercultural understanding as key elements of its work.

From May 30 to June 2, 2008, Musagetes convened the Barcelona Café at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), organized by Jordi Pascual and Robert Palmer, with distinguished artists, arts activists and cultural leaders from Barcelona and elsewhere in Europe and Canada. The foundation was interested in hearing new perspectives on the themes of the Manifesto, particularly from Catalan- and Spanish-speaking regions, and invited participants to advise it in grounding the ideas of the manifesto in specific actions to advance its mission. Read the Barcelona report here.

Expanding the Program

Musagetes Cafés are an innovative and sincere attempt to bring together the thinking of the world's most concerned and inspired minds. But they are also founded on the conviction that words must move into action if they are to create meaningful change. Building on our experience with the Cafés in 2007 (London) and 2008 (Barcelona), we have spent this year redefining and expanding the program to connect the Café conversations directly to experimental, transformative projects that have been identified by the local community as levers for social change.

Every Café will be directly associated with at least one concrete, local and socially-viable project that emerges out of the work of the participants. The next Cafés will look at a number of ideas generated by invited artists for the transformation of a particular site and project in the selected city. An artist residency will be established to develop a concept in collaboration with all stakeholders in order to see the project realize some of the ideas that are generated during the Café conversations. This project will focus and animate the conversation in the café but it also ensures that the city benefits from the thinking that takes place there.

There are six components that comprise a complete Café project over a 2-3 year period:

1. The support of City officials and local communities;
2. The three-day Café conversation with 15 public intellectuals, invited locally and globally;
3. A creative and integrated community engagement strategy at all levels and in all phases of the project (eg. DodoLab, Youth Cafés);
4. The establishment of a residency for artists and creative practitioners;
5. A feasible project for critical reflection and creative re-imagining; and
6. The dissemination of knowledge and insight generated by the project through the Café conversations, the residency and the community.

Establishing an International Dialogue

Because comparing and connecting two sets of regional understandings can provide both depth and greater relevance, Musagetes Cafés take place in pairs - with one Café happening in North America and another within a specifically selected cultural zone each year. These complementary pairings will enrich the insights generated by each café and offer a wider diversity of concrete social applications. They also bring global significance to the explorations of the cafés.

The zone of inquiry selected for the next few years is the Adriatic. We look to this region as both a historical and contemporary example of exceptional social transformation. The Adriatic is a great mixing bowl where different cultures and beliefs have encountered each other throughout history - it was a place where the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations came together and a place of Christian-Islamic intermingling. It has experienced great range of different cultural perspectives and has been one of the world's great generators of new cultural development. For these reasons it is an ideal area of focus for the Cafés.

During the next three years, the efforts of the Musagetes Cafés will be concentrated on small to mid-sized urban centres in North America and in circum-Adriatic countries.

Rijeka Café (June 2010)

On June 14-17, 2010, the first Café in this new series will be held in Rijeka, Croatia.

Rijeka was an important industrial city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the most important harbour in Titoʼs Yugoslavia, a point between Middle-Europe and the Mediterranean with overlapping Austro-Hungarian, Italian and Croatian political layers. As a city that is gradually redefining itself from being a Communist-era industrial centre to an education and cultural centre of the Republic of Croatia that thrives on knowledge, the arts and humanity, Rijeka is the right place for Musagetes to undertake this initiative. We have chosen Rijeka because of the incredible support of the local arts community and the enlightened municipality. It will provide rich opportunities for engaging community, reinvigorating sections of the city and providing another example of Balkan resilience and ingenuity.

In Rijeka, the specific projects of interest include the transformation of a 19th-century cigarette paper mill into a youth culture centre, expanding on an existing five-year, spontaneous music festival. The mill survived both Fascist and Communist regimes, multiple wars and revolutions, only to fall victim to globalization over the last two decades. The city has recently taken over a two-kilometre, water-break pier that runs parallel to the industrial sea front, with the intention to marry the imposing industrial-Gothic architecture with a recreation area. Rijeka has a solid track-record of cultural efforts often supported through infrastructure contributions by the City. These include an extraordinary 1970s cinema dedicated to art films and documentaries, and is increasingly used as part of the elementary visual literacy program; an independent bookstore with biweekly readings and cultural events; a new apartment dedicated to the City's newly-established artist residency program; and underground tunnels and bomb shelters are used as alternative recording studios for emerging punk and rock bands.

This Café will be the first one in the Adriatic region and will coincide thematically and chronologically with a Café in Sudbury, Ontario.

Greater Sudbury Café (September 2010)

Greater Sudbury is a post-industrial city transitioning towards a strengthened knowledge economy that is deeply rooted in the arts, innovation and creativity.

As a city that is gradually redefining itself through its history as an industrial and mining centre and one that thrives on knowledge and cultural production, Greater Sudbury is the right place for Musagetes to launch a Café project.

More details to follow shortly.

A new Musagetes Café website will be launched at the end of March.