Towards Fair Practice: Codes, Culture, and Collective Responsibility: Training #1: Internal Systems

With Laura Lotti (co-founder Other Internet Research Institute) and Juha van ’t Zelfde (artist, teacher).

In recent years, we cultural practitioners have taken various actions to enhance the ethical nature of our daily operations, including implementing a fair practice code, promoting good governance, and establishing codes of conduct. It has become the usual collection of policies and intentions. Meanwhile, we continue to use social media, ticketing platforms, Spotify, and other digital tools that, behind the scenes, are less innocent than their convenience suggests. While we curate programmes, these companies invest nonchalantly in military start-ups and colonial settlements.

So the question arises: how do we become less complicit or, more simply, less dependent? As organisations, and as cultural workers. Or, if it’s not too much to ask, how do we actively minimise harm: including, where relevant, complicity in human rights violations?

Therefore, we are organising three training sessions this September, bringing together national and international experts. Together, we will zoom out to gain a better understanding of the broader landscape, and then zoom in through practical workshops. Let us start the cultural year well, in search of better alternatives. Less as isolated islands, more in support of each other.

This first training session is about a hands-on workshop on the digital tools we rely on daily. From Google Drive to Instagram and Spotify. How we can we organize ourselves more consciously? What are the best alternatives?

Initiators

This workshop series is curated by (A)WAKE with support of engage. In the run-up to their programme from 9-12 October 2025 where they set up shop in Rotterdam Cool-Zuid for several social and cultural gatherings, (A)WAKE and engage have joined forces organising this series to support and equip their immediate community of participants, while at the same time extending the conversation to the wider cultural field. The aim is to offer tools, reflection, and momentum that benefit both those directly involved and the sector at large.