ERIAC Organises Conference on Roma Pride and Cultural Resilience | Join Online
Across Europe, rising nationalism, a stronger far right, and the closing of civic space are shrinking the room for pluralism, minority voices, and dissent. This pressure is often subtle: political interference in cultural institutions, control over public narratives, politicised funding, and the targeting of independent voices. For Roma arts and culture it shows up in historical revisionism, cuts to the infrastructure Roma cultural work depends on, and AI-amplified disinformation that spreads antigypsyism faster than ever.
The cultural conference Amari Kultura – Amari Zor (“Our Culture, Our Power”): Roma Pride and Cultural Resilience, organised by the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), asks what Roma culture can do in Europe as it is today.
The conference is open to online participants worldwide, via Zoom.
Discussion is shaped around five areas of Roma cultural life: arts and culture, media, academia, history and commemoration, and the Romani language. Across these areas, it explores culture as a source of pride and self-esteem that builds community resilience; a tool to prevent antigypsyism, not only respond to it, by reaching majority audiences and challenging stereotypes; and a two-way relationship with the mainstream, examining how today’s socio-political context creates risks and opportunities, and how the Roma cultural scene adapts, resists and asserts its voice. The aim is a shared understanding of current challenges, stronger cooperation across sectors, and common strategies for Roma arts and culture as a force for democratic resilience.
These questions matter for Europe as a whole. As the European Commission’s Culture Compass for Europe argues, culture is a core anchor of democratic resilience and social cohesion, so the visibility or erasure of Roma culture is a test of European pluralism itself.
The conference will address the following questions:
- How are historical revisionism, funding cuts and AI-driven disinformation reshaping the conditions in which Roma arts and culture operate?
- How does the current mainstream socio-political climate affect Roma communities and culture — and where, within that same climate, do genuine opportunities emerge?
- How does Roma culture function simultaneously as a source of internal pride and resilience and as a tool for preventing antigypsyism through the education of majority populations?
- Why is this conversation — framed as being about and for Roma communities — also a conversation of direct relevance to Europe as a whole?
- What are the biggest priorities in the current moment, and which areas of engagement are most urgent?
- How do we ensure that impact reaches those at the heart of our work — Roma communities themselves — rather than remaining at the level of European institutions and discourse?
The conference is a space for dialogue among Roma and non-Roma stakeholders, ERIAC members and people beyond the ERIAC community: artists, cultural practitioners, journalists, academics, historians, language experts, policymakers and civil society shaping the Roma cultural field today. Together they build a common platform for thinking, collaboration and exchange.
The conference is organised by ERIAC with the support of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, the European Commission, the Council of Europe, and the Roma Foundation for Europe.
