The Europe Challenge: Local experiences, European connections

Local questions are often shared questions in a European context. With the Europe Challenge we build towards shared solutions to some of the most pressing challenges we face. We do this with a network of public libraries which actively involve their communities in a European experience and activities. This is our approach of addressing the future of Europe in a systemic way:  by listening and working with the citizens where they are, by using existing cultural public infrastructure and in this way aiming to have an impact well beyond the European Cultural Foundation’s resources and location.

The Europe Challenge brings together the European Cultural Foundation’s three focus areas: Experience, Imagine and Share Europe by offering local citizens a European experience through the libraries, imagining the future of Europe from a local perspective, and creating a shared European public space through connecting libraries across Europe.

The Europe Challenge is not a single event. It is a collaborative process with libraries across Europe which together with their communities will identify and address a concrete challenge that is relevant for their local context. They are facilitated to work together in a European network, and share practices and approaches to tackle the identified local challenges. You may read a lot more about our partners and the process on the dedicated webpage on the Europe Challenge.

For our annual magazine Common Ground we invited a series of contributors to reflect on the place and meaning of libraries in our continent, and beyond.

In the PDF below you will get to know the multifaceted world of libraries. From a conversation our project managers Nicola Mullenger and Olga Alexeeva had with Pauline De Wolf of De Krook in Ghent (Belgium) and Maria Montia Enrich and Andreu Orte del Molino of Jordi Rubió i Balaguer Public Library in Sant Boi de Llobergat (Spain), via an exchange of thoughts between PL2030 Director, Ilona Kish, with Anthony Zacharzewski, Director-General and President of Democratic Society (Demsoc) and an essay by Oskar Hernández-Pérez on public libraries as public labs to a thought piece connecting libraries and the sustainable development goals. The last contribution is an interview of one of our grantees by Ashley Thompson.