What does the concept "European culture" mean today? What is its future and what role does it have in social change?These are some of the questions the European Congress of Culture aims to answer. It is being organised in Wroclaw (Poland) between 8 and 11 September, 2011, and the Grec Festival of Barcelona has been invited to take part in its Council, along with other prestigious festivals like the Avignon Festival, the Athens International Festival of Theatre, the Wiener Festwochen and the Berlin Film Festival.

The Congress is being organised to mark the Polish Presidency of the European Union and its mission is to rethink the role of culture in today's world, as an integration factor capable of creating common languages, as an instrument for social change, as a link between the global and the local, and as a factor for fostering social creativity, among other things.

The full Congress programme will be based round a book on contemporary European culture and its future perspectives the Polish Minister of Culture has commissioned from Professor Zygmunt Bauman. Bauman is a sociologist and thinker who, among other matters, has taken a strong interest in the nature of modernity. His idea is a concept known as the "gardening metaphor", which counterpoises designer cultures directed by political forces with wild or "natural" cultures.

The Congress is being organised in collaboration with most of the scientific and artistic institutions of Europe. It included over one hundred events and projects run by artists, academics, thinkers and activists like Zygmunt Bauman, Jan Fabre, Oliviero Toscani, Azra Akšamija, Mirosław Bałka, Krzysztof Penderecki, Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead), Aphex Twin, Stefan Kaegi, Wilhelm Sasnal and Fatos Lubonja.

Other areas of debate at the Congress will include the current ease in producing and spreading culture; the links between culture, power and the economy; what it means to be European today; the role of cultural promotion campaigns; the use of pre-existing ideas in the world of art; the alternative realities created by new technologies; the strong interdisciplinary element in art today; the new role of authorship in a world where sharing, distributing and manipulating is easier than ever; and the growing relationship between art and science.