Pop the Vote: Culture on the Ballot

26.05.2023

„Pop the Vote! Culture on Ballot“ encourages active engagement of European citizens around the 2024 European Parliamentary Elections through culture. Co-funded by the European Parliament, Pop the Vote works with young artists and art school students in 13 EU countries to act as Changemakers in their own communities and mobilise them to participate in the European Parliamentary elections 2024 by co-creating a multi-action campaign. Pop the Vote uses innovative ways of community engagement with culture and the arts at its core by using the language of arts and culture for political change and approaches of artivism and community culture. The project aims to reach citizens, including underrepresented groups that tend to be less engaged with the European decision-making processes and encourage them to participate in the EP elections in 2024.

Where will Pop the Vote be?

13 EU countries have been selected for this project: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. These countries were selected on the basis of (1) low voters’ turnout in the European Parliamentary elections 2019, (2) strong representation of Culture Action Europe members and (3) countries with comparatively higher voters’ turn out to act as an inspiration for others to engage more in the EU debates.

What will Changemakers do?

Pop the Vote will select 4 young artists and/or art students from each of the selected 13 EU countries, making 52 Changemakers total. Changemakers will organise 2 election engagement events in the month leading up to the elections each in their respective countries, reaching 5200 citizens in total.

Before their events, Changemakers will attend the Changemakers’ Playground Camp: an immersive 1-week training in Brussels that combines theoretical learnings about the EU, its Institutions, and the 2024 elections as well as theories of change, methodologies of artivism and audience engagement, public campaigning and communications. By the end of the camp, Changemakers will develop a prototype of their proposed engagement events.

Supporting members:

The following Culture Action Europe members will support the Pop the Vote project by disseminating the open call to help us find brilliant Changemakers from far and wide. These members are ambassadors of the Pop the Vote project in each country they represent. You can find more about each of them by clicking on the links below: