Developed as part of TEH’s Common Spaces project (2025–2028), the policy proposal draws on the TEH101 Conference: Policy briefs from the four sessions held in TEH101 Conference in Marseille and on the New European Bauhaus (NEB) Festival 2026 reflections. It provides recommendations to EU policy makers, informs TEH's advocacy with EU institutions, and provides the network's member centres with a shared language for the work they are already doing.
This proposal, grounded in four workshops held at TEH101 Conference in Marseille, France in April 2026, identifies three structural tensions that the sector could address: the gap between scaling and growing, the performative nature of inclusion policies, and economic models misaligned with transition. It argues that what TEH member centres do – care, maintenance, listening, imagination, rootedness – is the invisible infrastructure of habitability that EU programmes currently miss.
The proposal calls on EU policymakers to invest in a different kind of infrastructure: not only buildings, but the conditions that make collective life possible – through AgoraEU, the New European Bauhaus Facility, the Work Plan for Culture 2027–2030, and climate-adaptation frameworks.
The proposal is intended to serve three purposes:
- to provide recommendations to EU policy makers
- to inform TEH's advocacy with EU institutions
- to provide the network's member centres with a shared language for the work they are already doing.
Thank you to Emmanuel Vergès, the writer of this proposal, as well as the writers of the policy briefs: Rita Delgado Correcher and Leonardo Delmonte, Kitti Baracsi, Emmanuel Vergès and Zuzana Ernst.