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From Ideas to Action
“The Atelier was a space where reflection met action - where ideas started to take form.” (Participant reflection)
The Atelier in San Sebastián brought the group together in-person during a week of exchange within a larger international community of festival makers. Working alongside peers from across Europe and beyond, participants revisited the challenges identified earlier and began to see how their own local realities connected to global conversations about culture, care, and resilience.
The experience helped transform shared reflection into concrete direction. Discussions about ethics, sustainability, and collaboration turned into first sketches of collaborative projects - ideas that linked personal experience with collective learning. Each participant began identifying what they wanted to explore further and what kind of mentorship could help them take the next step.
Please find more information about the Atelier here.
Photo: Pablo Cifuentes Foto, Morgan Crea
Photo: Pablo Cifuentes Foto, Morgan Crea
After returning home, the group reconnected online for a reflection session on 23 April 2025 to share early project idea drafts and formulate guiding questions for the mentorship phase. During this conversation, several new collaborations were outlined:
Balkan Street Art Initiatives (Jovana & Benjamin) - developing a Female Street Art Incubator to empower women artists and a Balkan Street Art Awards to strengthen regional cooperation.
Swinging Europe Network Expansion (Iva) - scaling a small initiative into a wider European collaboration with a structured exchange model.
Literary Festivals Collaboration (Yulia & Natasha) - connecting Ukrainian literature and contemporary music with international partners through translation and performance.
OutSider × Kyiv Queer Film Collaboration (Sasha) - creating an educational section for emerging filmmakers and curators in Ukraine, combining local work with international expertise.
New Festival Foundations (Roberta) - developing the structure and partnerships for a new festival initiative integrating accessibility and online participation.
As participants presented their ideas, they also defined key questions to bring to their mentors - on sustaining projects, structuring partnerships, engaging communities, and building resilience in uncertain contexts. These questions became the bridge between the shared learning of the Atelier and the personal learning of the mentorship phase.
The following pages present these collaborations and mentorship journeys which took place from April to October (some of them are still ongoing) - showing how ideas shaped in San Sebastián continued to grow through dialogue, advice, and exchange.
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