Recipes for Resilience: the Central and Eastern European cookbook

In the current, heavily polarized political spheres across the continent, many countries are facing a potential backsliding of previously untouchable democratic pillars. In some cases, the freedom of press, public broadcasters and independent newspapers are under threat of devastating budget cuts or private takeovers. For some countries, this is hardly a new reality. In the past decade, populist politicians and governments have been using every trick in the book to remain in power. Facing often arbitrary and whimsical political decisions, organizers and venues in Central and Eastern Europe have been forced to resort to extraordinary countermeasures. Their resilience, in the form of artistic interventions and protest, can teach us something about our own context and how to unite, protect and fortify public institutions.