SANTA SOFIA.- Conceived as the first international forum dedicated specifically to the sustainability of culture, the event is a yearly large conference which brings together artists, thinkers, economists, researchers, and cultural professionals to address how culture can be sustained environmentally, socially, and economically.
Following its first edition in 2025, the International Forum on the Sustainability of Culture returns on September 25–26, 2026 with Culture Commons, two days of discussions, lectures, and collective working sessions exploring culture as a shared infrastructure.
The Forum asks what happens when the commons are considered not only as a theoretical framework, but as a practical model for cultural, economic, and social life. How can cultural resources, knowledge, technologies, and institutions be collectively governed and sustained? What forms of cooperation can redistribute power? And what economic models might allow culture to move beyond structures based primarily on competition and dependency?
These questions unfold through three interconnected trajectories: Digital Commons, Technology and Artificial Intelligence; Shared Governance and Participative Cultures; and Post-Capitalist Economies and Mutualist Models.
The programme brings together important international figures including Silvia Federici, Stavros Stavrides, Gladys Tzul Tzul, Laura Pando Martínez, ruangrupa, Massimo De Angelis, Patricia Lannes, Roxana Fabius, David Bollier, Ibrahim Tchan, and many others.
The structure of the Forum reflects the idea of the commons itself. Rather than taking place in a single institution, Culture Commons unfolds through a distributed international network, moving across different territories and time zones and connecting participants in real time.
Sessions take place across hubs in New York (Prime Produce Apprentice Cooperative, Wikimedia New York, Cybernetics Library), Shenzhen (Sea World Culture and Arts Centre), Tokyo (Untitled Space), Tanguiéta (Écomusée Tata Somba), Jakarta (Gudskul), and Santa Sofia (Vero Stoppioni Gallery of Contemporary Art), alongside online contributions. Each node begins from its own context: New York examines how cultural organisations might build and govern resources collectively; Shenzhen brings together independent and self-organised spaces to discuss cooperation and mutual support; Tanguiéta approaches heritage and local resources through the Écomusée Tata Somba; Jakarta draws on ruangrupa’s lumbung practice to explore sharing as an economic infrastructure; and Santa Sofia asks whether cooperatives, shared funds, and mutualist structures can offer alternative ways of sustaining cultural institutions.
Each roundtable is conceived as a collective laboratory rather than a conventional conference panel: a space for testing the commons against concrete conditions and asking where these models work, where they encounter limits, and what practical tools can emerge from them.
The Forum is open to participation both in person and online. Public sessions include opportunities for questions and discussion, connecting audiences across the different hubs.
The 2026 International Forum on the Sustainability of Culture is promoted by Comune di Santa Sofia, Regione Emilia Romagna, Parco Nazionale delle Foreste Casentinesi, with the support of LAM Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì, San Marino University, Wikimedia NYC, Gestholding Srl. It is organized by Institution.
