Ortaklaşa: Culture, Dialogue and Support Programme, carried out by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) with the support of the European Union (EU) under the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance III, continues its journey with its second phase.
One of İKSV’s three fundamental objectives is to contribute to the development of cultural policies in Türkiye. To this end, the İKSV Cultural Policy Studies Department, active since 2010, conducts research centred on the right to culture, prepares publications, and shares its research outputs with the public.
Designed and implemented within this framework, Ortaklaşa brought together civil society organisations (CSOs) and municipalities across Türkiye during its first phase between 2023 and 2026, creating a strong foundation for the development of fair cultural cooperation and participatory cultural policies at the local level. The comprehensive field research and the resulting report, The Local Cultural Ecosystem in Türkiye, together with the regional meetings, training programmes, grant scheme, and the policy document A Road Map for Fair Cultural Cooperation published at the end of the project, collectively made significant contributions to the development of Türkiye’s cultural ecosystem. In 2023 and 2024, the two open calls launched under the Ortaklaşa Sub-Grant Programme received 252 applications from across the country. A total of 1,300,000 euros in sub-grant support was provided to 13 projects implemented through partnerships between 13 civil society organisations and 18 municipalities. Covering a wide range of activities, from workshops and cultural policy documents to the transformation of spaces, celebrations and festivals, these projects pioneered the development of a trust-based culture of working together at the local level.
In its new phase, Ortaklaşa continues to focus on cultural rights and participatory governance while offering a holistic framework that includes sub-grant support, community building, mentorship and advocacy activities. With Culture Action Europe (CAE) as a partner and the Marmara Municipalities Union (MMU) as an associate, the project aims to establish systematic and sustainable channels of dialogue between municipalities and civil society organisations. In this context, the development of rights-based and inclusive local cultural policies, the strengthening of cultural cooperation between Türkiye and Europe, and the dissemination of practice-oriented cooperation models are among the project’s main objectives.
Aiming to strengthen dialogue and cooperation between civil society organisations and municipalities active in the field of arts and culture, the Ortaklaşa Sub-Grant Programme continues in the 2026-2029 period with a total of 1,850,000 euros to be allocated in sub-grant support. Through the projects to be supported over the next three years, the Ortaklaşa Sub-Grant Programme seeks to foster cultural ties at national and international levels and contribute to lasting and sustainable cooperation in the local cultural ecosystem.
In the 2026–2029 period, the programme is implementing two separate “Ortaklaşa Calls for Proposals” to support CSO-municipality cooperation at the local level, as well as the “EU-Türkiye Cultural Partnership Call”, which promotes partnerships between Türkiye and Europe. In this context, the first Ortaklaşa Call for Proposals, held between 17 March and 18 May 2026, received 147 applications from across the country. Four projects implemented through partnerships between four civil society organisations and municipalities started on 1 September 2026.
In order to enhance the impact of the supported projects in this cycle, learning and mentorship mechanisms will be put in place. The Sub-Grant Programme requires all beneficiaries to actively engage in this mentorship process. Tailored to project-specific needs, a minimum of 15 mentorship sessions will be provided to all sub-granted CSO and municipal partners. In the fields of cultural policy and cultural management, this mentorship aims to enable project teams from CSOs and municipalities to achieve concrete progress on their targeted needs, gain a holistic perspective, and access new professional networks.
One of the key focuses of Ortaklaşa in the 2026–2029 period is the Ortaklaşa Community. The Community aims to carry the relationships and accumulated experience formed around sub-grant projects during the first phase of the programme into the new phase. New sub-grantees will be able to come together with project teams and municipality representatives supported in the previous phase and benefit directly from their experience of project implementation. At the same time, a common ground will be created to maintain connections among cultural professionals who have crossed paths with Ortaklaşa at different stages and to develop new cooperation. Supported through in-person and online meetings, peer learning, experience sharing and thematic work, this structure is expected to contribute to building relationships that go beyond project durations, developing new work around shared needs, and strengthening the arts and culture ecosystem formed around Ortaklaşa.
The Ortaklaşa: Culture, Dialogue and Support Programme supported the shaping of local cultural policies through participatory methods by developing an innovative model of cooperation between civil society organisations and municipalities working in the field of arts and culture in Türkiye. In Ortaklaşa’s second phase, this model has gained an international dimension through the partnership with CAE and is opening towards Europe through the Ortaklaşa EU-Türkiye Cultural Partnership Call. By supporting partnerships between CSOs and municipalities in Türkiye and their counterparts in Europe, the call aims to extend this participatory model beyond Türkiye, creating space for CSOs and municipalities across Europe to shape cultural cooperation together.
The theoretical and principled framework of this call draws on UNESCO’s 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and the principle agreed through the MONDIACULT processes that “culture as a global public good”. The indispensable role of civil society underlined in Article 11 of the Convention, together with the vision of “co-creation of policy and knowledge” emphasised during the 10th Conference of Parties and the 19th Intergovernmental Committee processes, forms the basis of the programme’s multi-partner cooperation structure. By positioning civil society and local governments as equal partners, the call takes to the international level the idea that cultural policies can be shaped not only centrally, but also through local and multi-actor consensus.
The Ortaklaşa EU-Türkiye Cultural Partnership Call invites civil society organisations working in arts and culture in Türkiye and Europe to develop projects through consortia of four partners that also include municipalities from both sides. Bringing civil society and local governments in Türkiye and Europe together within the same cooperation model in the field of arts and culture, the call aims to encourage experience sharing, mutual learning and co-production, and to develop lasting partnerships and international networks informed by different local experiences.
Relations between Türkiye and Europe in the field of arts and culture have long been built on shared values, dialogue and cooperation. As the European Commission’s strategic roadmap, the “Culture Compass for Europe,” also emphasises, cultural cooperation provides a fundamental basis for strengthening shared democratic values, cultural rights and mutual understanding in enlargement and integration processes. Türkiye’s status as a candidate country for the European Union further increases the importance of cultural contacts, mutual understanding and civil society cooperation. Sustaining these relations depends on organisations producing together, sharing experience and building long-term partnerships.
The Ortaklaşa EU-Türkiye Cultural Partnership Call responds to this need by bringing civil society cultural organisations and municipalities in Türkiye and Europe together around joint projects, creating a basis for new cooperation. Ortaklaşa approaches relations between Türkiye and Europe as a cultural ecosystem, in which local actors develop practices of solidarity and co-production, shaped by joint decision-making and shared responsibility. The aim is to bring the fair cooperation model developed in Türkiye under Ortaklaşa into dialogue with European practice, building new partnerships and grounding cultural policy in ideas rooted in practice.
Municipalities are approached as important actors in cultural governance processes. The call encourages local governments in Türkiye and Europe to learn from one another, share experience, develop new cooperation models and build stronger links with international cultural networks, in cultural policy, participatory governance and public cultural services.
The call also aims to make visible the structural inequalities encountered in international cultural cooperation and to encourage fair cooperation models that work to transform them. Its core principles include partnerships centred on local knowledge and experience, and sensitivity to different ways of working and institutional capacities.
The global recommendations highlighted in the Report of the 5th Civil Society Forum of the UNESCO 2005 Convention – including developing sustainable funding and capacity models for independent actors, removing barriers to artist mobility, and establishing permanent mechanisms for civil society-public sector dialogue – also shape the priorities of this call.
The Ortaklaşa EU-Türkiye Cultural Partnership Call;
Within the scope of this call, projects are expected to be developed within a cooperation structure of four institutions, consisting of:
Through this cooperation structure, the programme aims to encourage cross-border learning and sustainable cooperation among civil society cultural organisations, local governments and cultural professionals.
This call for proposals aims to strengthen cultural dialogue between Türkiye and Europe, encourage cross-border cooperation, create new opportunities for cultural mobility and co-production, and support the development of long-term solidarity networks among cultural professionals and local governments. The objectives of the Ortaklaşa EU-Türkiye Cultural Partnership Call for Proposals are as follows:
As a core principle cutting across all these objectives, it is critical that projects address, through an intersectional approach, the barriers to the right to access, participate in and contribute to cultural life, based on cultural rights, the diversity of cultural expressions, gender equality and ecological sensitivity. The access, participation and inclusion mechanisms defined within Ortaklaşa’s fair cultural cooperation framework, together with the principles of protecting the diversity of cultural expressions, are expected to be effectively implemented at every stage of the project. Applications should therefore clearly demonstrate how these principles are reflected in the activity plan, which budget items support them, and how they will be monitored through concrete, measurable indicators.
Projects supported under the Ortaklaşa EU-Türkiye Cultural Partnership Call are expected to strengthen the local cultural ecosystem in Türkiye while establishing lasting ties between cultural actors in Türkiye and Europe and creating a field of fair and sustainable cultural cooperation. In this context, projects are expected to contribute to the following results:
*İKSV reserves the right not to allocate the entire budget earmarked for the call for proposals if a sufficient number of eligible applications is not received.
**The lead applicant is expected to provide co-financing of at least 5% of the total project budget. In-kind contributions cannot be considered as co-financing.
To be eligible for a sub-grant, the lead applicant must meet the following conditions:
* These are cooperatives whose articles of association state that profits will not be distributed to members, which allocate their income to the cooperative’s expenses, investments, improvements in service quality and the fulfilment of social objectives, and which do not distribute profits to members.
** Albania, Iceland, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia
*** Co-applicants participate in the design and implementation of the project, and their costs are considered eligible costs in the same way as the costs of the lead applicant.
**** Associates play a real role in the project but may not receive funding from the sub-grant, except for per diems and travel costs. As official stakeholders of the project, they are credited in project documents and communication materials, and their visibility is ensured with their names and logos.
| NOTE 1: Applications must establish a consortium of four institutions, consisting of one lead applicant organisation from Türkiye, one co-applicant organisation from an EU member state or candidate country, and a total of two municipal associates, one from Türkiye and one from an EU member state or candidate country. Applications that do not meet this partnership structure will be rejected directly and will not be evaluated. |
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| NOTE 2: This call for proposals aims to develop participatory cultural policies at the local level in Türkiye. Cultural organisations in Türkiye with civil society organisation status and their counterparts in Europe are expected to submit projects on cultural planning, cultural management and the development of participatory cultural policies. |
| NOTE 3: The lead applicant CSO and the municipal project associate in Türkiye may be based in different towns, districts or cities. The co-applicant CSO and municipal associate from an EU member state or candidate country may likewise be based in different towns, districts or cities. |
| NOTE 4: If branches of the lead applicant and co-applicant CSOs are conditionally accepted following the evaluation of applications, they will be required to submit a “confirmation letter” from their headquarters. |
Applicants in any of the following situations cannot receive financial support from the Ortaklaşa Sub-Grant Programme:
The planned duration of a project may not be shorter than 9 months or longer than 12 months.
Projects must be implemented primarily in Türkiye. Some limited project activities may be carried out in EU member states or candidate countries, provided that they are well justified and contribute to achieving the objectives of the call. Such activities must not constitute the main focus of the project; the main part of implementation and the core activities must take place in Türkiye. The majority of the project budget must be spent in Türkiye.
Project applications must be presented as a coherent and integrated set of activities with clearly defined objectives, target groups, planned activities and expected results that serve the objectives of the Ortaklaşa EU-Türkiye Cultural Partnership Call for Proposals. The project may include one or more of the types of activities listed below, as well as similar activities:
a. Activities with Impact on Policy-Making Processes in Arts and Culture
b. Artistic Production and Participatory Cultural Events
c. Capacity Building and Experience Sharing Activities
d. Infrastructure and Organisational Strengthening
e. Outreach, Visibility and Communication Activities
The rules for applying to the EU-Türkiye Cultural Partnership Call for Proposals are as follows:
ANNEX 1- Application form
ANNEX 2- Draft project budget
ANNEX 3- Logical framework
ANNEX 4- Activity plan
ANNEX 5- Declaration by the lead applicant (signed and stamped)
ANNEX 6- Partnership declaration demonstrating cooperation with an institution from an EU member state or candidate country (signed and stamped by the authorised decision-making body of the relevant CSO)
ANNEX 7– Declarations by Associates: associate declarations from two municipalities, one from Türkiye and the other from an EU member state or candidate country, signed and stamped by the authorised decision-making body of the relevant municipality*.
*At the time the sub-grant contract is signed, a signed municipal council decision approved by the authorised person and authority may be requested from the municipal associates.
ANNEX 8- Data Protection Notice
Other documents to be submitted concerning the applicant organisation and its partner:
IMPORTANT NOTE: Documents other than the forms downloaded from the Ortaklaşa website will not be accepted.
Before uploading your application, please rename your documents as follows:
OrganisationName_ProjectName_ApplicationForm
OrganisationName_ProjectName_BudgetForm
OrganisationName_ProjectName_LogicalFramework
OrganisationName_ProjectName_ActivityPlan
OrganisationName_ProjectName_PartnerDeclaration
OrganisationName_ProjectName_AssociateDeclaration
OrganisationName_ProjectName_DataProtectionNotice
Applications will be reviewed and evaluated by an Evaluation Committee consisting of representatives of İKSV and MMU and independent experts. The following stages will be followed in the evaluation of all projects submitted by applicants:
Stage 1: Preliminary review and administrative check of applications by the project team,
Stage 2: Applications that pass the administrative check are shared with members of the Evaluation Committee,
Stage 3: The five members of the Evaluation Committee evaluate the applications that pass the administrative check and score them according to the criteria below (Project Application Evaluation Grid),
Stage 4: The project team and the Evaluation Committee meet to determine the projects selected for funding,
Stage 5: The project team contacts and informs the organisations selected for funding.
Applications are scored by the Evaluation Committee according to the evaluation criteria in the table below.
| Section | Score |
1. Financial and Operational Capacity of the Lead Applicant; Experience in Project Management |
12 |
| 1.1 Do the lead applicant and its partners have sufficient experience in project management? | |
| 1.2 Do the lead applicant and its partners have sufficient management capacity? (Including staff, equipment, and the knowledge and skills to manage the project budget.) | |
| 1.3 Does the lead applicant have stable and sufficient sources of funding? | |
2. Professional Competence and Experience Required for the Lead Applicant to Successfully Complete the Proposed Project |
15 |
| 2.1 Do the lead applicant and its partner have an institutional profile that actively produces in the field of arts and culture and/or directly contributes to cultural policy-making? | |
| 2.2 Does the organisation’s experience in completed and/or ongoing projects in this field meet the technical and professional competence required by the proposed project? | |
3. Relevance to the Objectives of the Call |
15 |
| 3.1 Are the objectives of the proposed project clearly stated? How relevant is the proposed project to the objectives and expected results of the call for proposals? | |
| 3.2 How relevant are the project activities to the needs and problems of the target area? How relevant are the activities to the project objectives? | |
| 3.3 Are the target groups and final beneficiaries clearly defined? Are the needs of the target groups clearly identified? Does the project provide solutions to these needs? | |
4. Cost-Effectiveness / Realistic and Balanced Budget |
15 |
| 4.1 Is there a link between the estimated costs and the expected results? | |
| 4.2 Are the planned expenditures necessary for the implementation of the project? | |
5. Feasibility of the Project |
7 |
| 5.1 How detailed and feasible is the activity plan? | |
| 5.2 How consistent and realistic are the project’s intervention logic and logical framework (alignment of activities-outputs-outcomes and analysis of risks/assumptions)? | |
6. Cultural Cooperation |
10 |
| 6.1 Is the level of participation and contribution of the CSO partner and municipal associates to the project sufficient? Are the roles of the partner CSO and municipal associates well defined? | |
| 6.2 Does the project establish genuine cultural cooperation between the lead applicant and its partner that enables experience sharing and mutual learning? | |
| 6.3 Does the project produce cultural and artistic outputs based on co-production among the project parties? Are these activities reflected in the activity plan? | |
7. Expected Impact |
9 |
| 7.1 Will the project have a tangible impact on the target groups? (Impact of project activities, temporary/permanent structures or mechanisms created, etc.) | |
| 7.2 Does the project include social impact for the target audience and final beneficiaries? | |
| 7.3 Does the project application include objectively verifiable indicators for the project results? | |
8. Originality |
3 |
| 8.1 How innovative is the overall project design? Does it have a distinctive approach? Can this approach inspire projects in different regions and disciplines and propose replicable practices? | |
9. Sustainability |
7 |
9.1 Are the expected results of the proposed project sustainable?
|
|
| 9.2 Is there a concrete sustainability plan for how the partnership will continue after the project ends? | |
| 9.3 Does the project have potential multiplier effects? (Including replication of project results, wider impact and dissemination of knowledge) | |
10. Projects that address, through an intersectional approach, barriers to the right to access, participate in and contribute to cultural life, based on cultural rights, the diversity of cultural expressions, gender equality and ecological sensitivity. |
7 |
| 10.1 Are the principles directly linked to the activities? | |
| 10.2 Are measurable targets set? Are resources allocated to these items in the budget? | |
TOTAL SCORE |
100 |
The following questions have been prepared to help you assess the extent to which your project idea aligns with Ortaklaşa’s approach and priorities. This list does not replace the eligibility and evaluation criteria set out above; it is a self-assessment tool intended to help you review your project idea before applying. Before submitting your application, you may evaluate your project idea through the following questions:
Results will be notified to all applicants by e-mail and will also be announced on the project website at ortaklasa.iksv.org. Organisations selected for funding will be contacted to sign the sub-grant contract. Once the sub-grant contract is signed by İKSV and the lead applicant CSO, the beneficiary becomes entitled to receive the sub-grant.
Projects supported under the Sub-Grant Programme must clearly acknowledge EU support and include information and communication activities aimed at raising awareness among their specific and general target audiences about the reasons for this support. All applicants are responsible for ensuring the visibility of the EU as the funding institution in their projects. (EU Communication and Visibility Guidelines for External Actions, published by the European Commission at eeas.europa.eu) The complementary “Ortaklaşa Communication and Visibility Guidelines” will be shared with sub-grant beneficiaries during project implementation. Sub-grant beneficiaries are required to comply with the rules set out in these guidelines.
Opening date of the call for proposals: 17 September 2026
Online information session: 28 September 2026, Time: 14.00 (UTC+3)
Online information session II: 15 October 2026, Time: 14.00 (UTC+3)
Submission deadline: 18 December 2026, Time: 17.00 (UTC+3)
Announcement of results: 16 March 2027
Indicative project start date: 1 April 2027
You can send your questions to ortaklasa.hibeler@iksv.org until 6th of December 2026 at 23.59 (UTC+3.) Answers to the questions will be added at regular intervals to the Frequently Asked Questions section under the Grants tab on the ortaklasa.iksv.org page.
Questions will be answered no later than 7 days before the submission deadline.
