A Common Ground for Story-telling: A Short Interview with Friso Wiersum
25 Sep 2024
Friso Wiersum, Editor-in-Chief of Common Ground, has dedicated himself to fostering cross-European storytelling that transcends borders and fosters connection. As a narrative platform for the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), the magazine is more than a communication tool—it’s a space where diverse voices and cultures meet, highlighting the shared challenges and triumphs across Europe. In this interview, Friso delves into the evolving role of Common Ground and the collaborations that continue to shape the way Europe tells its stories.
How do you choose which stories to feature in ‘Common Ground’? Can you tell us about one of your favourite stories and why it was important to share it with our readers?
Common Ground as an annual magazine came forth from the understanding that we as the European Cultural Foundation, might benefit from a central communications tool in which we can highlight all the things we are: a funder of numerous European initiatives, an initiator of programmes, a public policy institution, a spider in quite some European networks and a co-creator of a shared European public space. For, with multi-headed organisations such as ours, the overview of all things we do is not always immediately visible to our partners, networks and friends. Common Ground magazine, in that sense, really is a tool for showcasing our work in a much more narrative way than annual reports or newsletters can.
We believe that a well-designed magazine invites readers to slowly digest it outside of office hours and, hopefully, creates a deeper understanding of our work and the work fields we are active in. Therefore, the magazine is much more than a recollection of articles on our work; from the beginning onwards, we had decided the magazine should also be a testing ground, an opinion page if you like, for external contributors. On top of these elements, Common Ground magazine allows us to put some of our cultural demands – as outlined in the Cultural Deal for Europe – into practice: offer a platform for European artists and pay them fairly. Over the years, the magazine has included many European illustrators, authors and photographers whose work deserves pan-European audiences.
As you can imagine, it’s impossible to pick a favourite story from the five editions published till now. There are at least three things I like a lot about the development of Common Ground. One is that when it started from within the communications team, contributing to it felt like an additional burden to some colleagues. Now, it features in work plans, and early in the year, ideas on how to feature in the magazine are being discussed. The second one is that over all the years of being the editor-in-chief of the magazine, no external contributor has declined to contribute to it, whether it was a graphic designer, a policymaker, a photographer or a writer. Thirdly, how scouting and contacting possible contributors often results in getting to know great people, with some of whom I even exchange holiday postcards.
What I like, too, is how sometimes articles just come out of nowhere. For example, in the case of Claudia Janke’s ‘Wavelength Europe’ project, published in the first issue, Claudia contacted our general mail address asking whether she could stop by during her long trip across the continent the day after. Naturally, we welcomed her into our office and recorded ourselves waving to her camera. During our conversation, it became clear that her project would fit in the magazine seamlessly, so we agreed on an interview and to share some of her photography work.
What’s it like working with different artists and cultural organisations across Europe? Can you share a fun or surprising collaboration that ‘Common Ground’ has been part of?
As mentioned above the mere fact everyone invited wants to collaborate is the biggest fun, as it shows how Common Ground apparently fills a need for pan-European storytelling. But that shouldn’t surprise readers.
There are a few steady collaborators – besides graphic designer Lyanne Tonk, who deserves all credit for the look and feel of the magazine – who help out. Guido Snel was a co-organiser of the European Literature Night here in Amsterdam who can always suggest an author still not being published widely. Another is the platform Fine Acts from Sofia, whose campaigns with illustrators from across the continent have been published in Common Ground on more occasions already. As one of the collaborators in our programmes on European public digital space and media, Voxeurop has always been very helpful in connecting me to individual contributors to their site and granting republication rights.
Working with all the various contributors to the magazine is a great pleasure, hopefully reflected in the magazine. A lot of times invitations by mail result in online – and sometimes real time – meetings in which a future contributor and I discuss the direction of the contribution, in which portfolio of the magazine it fits and how it relates to other contributions. As one of the roles of the European Cultural Foundation is connecting upcoming initiatives to existing European platforms a great collaboration was inviting Black Coffee, a podcast from France/Italy, to comment on a piece by Hans Kundnani, preceding the publication of his book
Looking forward, what emerging cultural themes are you most excited to explore in ‘Common Ground’? How do these choices reflect the shifting dynamics of European society and the ECF’s strategic goals?
It’s not an emergent cultural theme, but ECF’s mission to help grow a European sentiment needs addressing again and again. In times of extreme right populism, European sentiments can easily be abused, and we need to take a firm stand against ideas that exclude anyone. Highlighting historical and emotional ties between various Europes and re-earthing ideas that connected Europe can help us understand we are not living in extraordinary dangerous times for European civilisation, but rather in a time of much-needed self-reflection on our place in the world. Political notions based on the fear of decline never brought any good, so we need to sketch out elements of a future we all want to be part of.
We will continue to address the ways in which Europeans are trying to slow down the climate crisis and the multitude of local solution-based approaches to dealing with it. Many of our grantees do so in community-driven ways that can be inspirational to other Europeans.
Another theme that needs to always be featured in upcoming issues is decolonisation. Whether that is touching on former colonising powers coming to terms with their historical roles or ways in which former Eastern European countries deal with Russian colonisation, the bottom line is: if we have no understanding of and knowledge of the complexities in our society, how can we ever act as one?
