Creating Futures: Three Years of Reimagining Culture's Role in a Changing World

The journey began in 2024 with “Creating Futures: Art and AI for Tomorrow's Narratives”. At a moment when public conversations about artificial intelligence were largely focused on disruption and efficiency, participants asked a different question: what role should artists and cultural practitioners play in shaping the development of emerging technologies?

Discussions explored ethical AI, creative agency, accountability, and the values that should guide innovation. The resulting Salzburg Statement on Artists Shaping Ethical AI Futures and accompanying digital publication captured practical recommendations and resources for artists, policymakers, technologists, and cultural leaders working to build more ethical and inclusive technological futures.

In 2025, the conversation shifted from technology to storytelling.

“Creating Futures: Art of Narrative” explored how stories shape public understanding, influence social norms, and create space for more inclusive and democratic futures. Against a backdrop of growing misinformation, polarization, and declining trust, participants examined how artists and cultural workers can challenge dominant narratives, elevate underrepresented voices, and foster empathy across difference.

The resulting digital publication highlights narrative strategies, artistic interventions, and offers practical tools and frameworks for those wanting to increase their use of creative practice for narrative strategy and movement building. 

By 2026, the focus turned to the systems that make cultural life possible.

“Creating Futures: Rethinking Cultural Institutions, Infrastructure, and Investment” examined how cultural ecosystems can become more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in a rapidly changing world. Participants explored questions of governance, funding, labor, infrastructure, and institutional transformation, considering what kinds of support structures will be needed to sustain culture in the decades ahead.

The session's forthcoming report captures emerging models, practical insights, and recommendations for strengthening the institutions and investment frameworks that enable creativity to thrive. 
 

Looking back across the three years, a clear pattern emerges. Each session examined a different dimension of cultural change: the technologies shaping creative practice, the narratives shaping public understanding, and the institutions shaping cultural possibility.

Together, these conversations pointed toward a broader realization: art and culture cannot be understood solely as a creative industry or economic sector. Artists, storytellers, cultural workers, and institutions play a vital role in shaping civic imagination, preserving collective memory, strengthening democratic participation, and fostering social cohesion.

This understanding is increasingly reflected in international policy discussions. UNESCO's MONDIACULT 2022 Declaration called for culture to be recognized as a global public good, while IFACCA has argued that culture should be understood both "as a dimension of our humanity" and as a sector that requires support, protection, promotion, and development.

At the same time, many of the systems that sustain artistic and cultural life are under increasing strain. New technologies are transforming creative practice. Funding models are shifting. Institutions face growing questions of legitimacy, representation, and public value. Artists and cultural workers continue to confront challenges of recognition, remuneration, and precarity.
 

Building on the networks, insights, and relationships developed through Creating Futures, the Forum will provide a new international platform for leadership dialogue, strategic exchange, and collaborative inquiry on the future of culture, arts, and society.

Creating Futures helped us understand the forces reshaping artistic practice, cultural institutions, and creative ecosystems. The Cultural Futures Forum will focus on how artists, cultural leaders, funders, policymakers, and institutions can respond. 

Erwin Maas, a member of the Salzburg Global Advisory Council on Culture and Arts, stated that:  

"As art and culture gain greater recognition as public goods and vital contributors across sectors to democratic, social, and economic resilience, there is a growing need for spaces where artists, cultural leaders, funders, policymakers, and institutions can think collectively with leaders and thinkers from other sectors about the future. The Cultural Futures Forum at Salzburg Global is designed to be one of those spaces."

Through a four-year exploration of cultural work, value creation, governance, infrastructure, and collective action, it will create space to ask difficult questions, build new connections, and explore how culture can contribute to more resilient, equitable, and sustainable futures.

The challenges facing the cultural sector are unlikely to become simpler in the years ahead. As the world approaches 2030 and reflects on the ambitions and unfinished work of the Sustainable Development Goals, these conversations feel more important than ever.

Looking across the Creating Futures series, it becomes clear that art and culture are not merely responding to change. Through creativity, storytelling, leadership, and collaboration, artists and cultural practitioners are helping shape the futures we will inhabit.

The task now is not simply to help artists and cultural leaders adapt to a changing future. It is to ensure they have the networks, resources, and spaces they need to shape it.