These are just some of the questions that were attempted to be answered during the three days of work that took place in Cluj - Napoca (Romania) during the 13th conference of Culture Next, the network whose members include 40 cities that are candidates for the European Capital of Culture and cities that participated in the competition but did not win the title.

Much was discussed first during the pre-meeting, then during meetings open to the public.

Three days of work on the future of culture, in general, and on the future of the European Capitals of Culture with an in-depth look at the topic of sustainable development.

After the pre-meeting meetings to define the work agenda, on the afternoon of the first day, the performance ‘The Last Lamentation’, an artistic project by Valentina Medda, through which the artist investigates the tradition of ritual mourning in the Mediterranean by placing it at the centre of contemporary reflection, was proposed on the banks of the river Somesul Mic.

Winner of several international awards, The Last Lamentation is a funeral ritual for the Mediterranean Sea, conceived by artist Valentina Medda as a place of waiting, suspension and passing away, the embodiment of an absence - a repository of corpses, and a corpse in itself. The work recounts the tragedy of the sea through a hypnotic vocal and choreographic score that reworks ritual codes in contemporary and abstract forms. The powerful presence of 12 weeping women, dressed in black and standing beside the sea, makes the absence of the dead more tangible by contrast and makes their silent voices explode.

The performance along the river bank with the women in black moving slowly, as in a funeral, towards the sun as it set, amid general curiosity and singing that immersed the audience in a surreal dimension. Then, in the evening, the welcome party for guests with greetings from Emilia Botezan, Head of International Relations Cluj-Napoca Municipality, and Ștefan Teișanu, Secretary General Culture Next, and the Live set w/ DJ Sugar.

The following morning, the work was opened by András Farkas, Co-founder PONT Group, Executive Team Culture Next and Stefan Teisanu. ‘Culture next,’ Stefan said, ‘was born from the idea of an initial small group of cities that had participated in the European Capital of Culture competition and like Cluj had lost. We asked ourselves about the future of these cities and the need not to lose the work done around culture. And so we grew to become more than 40 cities that all together reflect and move to improve the quality of life of their communities through culture. And over time, thanks also to the collaboration of Steve Green, we have accumulated a huge amount of documentation material on capital cities'.

After welcome greetings from Horea Poenar, Vice-Rector of the Babeș-Bolyai University, Pascal Gielen's paper on Commoning the City. Art, Urban Intimacies and the Aesthetics of Democracies.

Pascal Gielen is a writer and full professor of sociology of culture and politics at the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA) where he leads the Culture Commons Quest Office.

In his speech, he focused on the extent to which art and culture can improve cities, starting with Michel de Certeau's thought that makes a distinction between strategies and tactics and places and spaces to analyse everyday life in cities where we are obliged to make long-term plans.

Place is a fixed place, a statue, an immovable. Space is liquid and can be changed. Cities in this context should be understood more as spaces than as places. The creative industries can help change cities for the better, but unfortunately artists no longer seem to have a place to produce. ‘We need to make cities more human, more inclusive, issues that the next culture capitals must address’.

Immediately afterwards, some case studies on culture and sustainable development were proposed, such as Faro (Portugal), Larnaka (Cyprus), Ungheni (Moldova) Timisoara (Romania). Example topics: New European Bauhaus, Culture and Resilience, Culture and Climate, Creative Industries, Cultural Heritage Management, Culture and Democracy, Culture and Well-being, others.

In the afternoon, in the Tranzit house, there was a wide-ranging and interesting debate on the topic of the relationship between SGD and Culture in the next European agenda.

We will report on this in the next article.

(End of part one)