During Contemporary Art Days Summit 2026, artists, curators, institutions, artist-run initiatives, and other organisations from across the field come together to collectively reflect on the infrastructures that support contemporary art. Through dialogue, knowledge exchange, and other collaborative working methods, we will explore a series of key questions throughout the year:
- How can art operate in a time shaped by multiple overlapping crises?
- How can we rethink our understanding of resources and the ways they are distributed?
- What forms of community and solidarity do the infrastructures of contemporary art need in order to remain sustainable and relevant?
The Contemporary Art Days Summit 2026 is an internationally oriented meeting place where the conditions, infrastructures, and future possibilities of contemporary art are explored collectively. Our collaboration with Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk throughout the year connects local initiatives in Sweden to broader European experiences of artistic organising, collective learning, and institutional transformation. Alongside this, a series of digital seminars will deepen the conversation by examining how political change affects artistic freedom, long-term sustainability, and the capacity to strategize and act. Together, these two strands form an ongoing process centred on international exchange, collective analysis, and the development of transformative approaches to strengthen the conditions for contemporary art in a time of profound societal change.
Collaboration with artist Jeanne van Heeswijk
In 2026, the summit is developed in collaboration with artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, whose practice brings together art, social engagement, and collective organizing. Since 2025, she has been the artistic director of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht, the Netherlands, which she has been collectivising into BAK Basecamp for Tactical Imaginaries.
This work enacts how an art institution can function as a space for shared resources, art in relation to collective learning, and active forms of making, doing, and reflection. The BAK Basecamp is grounded in a question that is central to this year’s Contemporary Art Days Summit: how can an art institution understand itself as a cultural infrastructure that responds to current urgencies and needs?
Digital Seminar Series – Artistic Organising in Times of Upheaval
In addition to the collaboration with Jeanne van Heeswijk, we are organizing a digital seminar series which explores how artists, institutions, and other cultural practitioners in Sweden can learn from experiences in European countries where political shifts have had a direct impact on the arts. It also examines how these changes affect the conditions under which art is produced and presented, and how artists and arts organisations navigate these realities across different European contexts.
The seminars are grounded in a number of questions that frequently emerge in dialogue with the contemporary art field in Sweden:
- How are artistic freedom and the arm’s length principle affected by political change?
- What conditions are needed for the contemporary art field to operate sustainably over the long term?
- How do shifts in political governance shape artistic and organisational strategies?
The seminar series is produced by Public Art Agency Sweden and CAPIm – The Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary (HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, and the Royal Institute of Art), in collaboration with Visual Arts Association Sweden and the Swedish Artists’ Organisation.
LinkedIn Group
The Contemporary Art Days LinkedIn group serves as an additional forum for dialogue, where we share inspiration, discussion topics, open calls, and other relevant resources. If you are on LinkedIn, you are welcome to request to join the group now.