AMASS proposed an innovative approach to address addressed societal challenges in Europe through arts practice, arts education, arts-based research, and design thinking that can impact on and mitigate such challenges. AMASS brought together societies in Europe that are often considered peripheral but may contribute valuable experiences of education through arts and culture. The project learned from, invested in, and celebrated the diversity of cultures in Europe by creating new bonds through arts and cultural actions and activities between regional communities, cultures, and localities in Europe, with a focus on reaching the unreached: socially disadvantaged and culturally marginalised communities. Through face-to-face and digital cross-border collaborations within Europe and globally, the arts and cultural practices of Europe’s peripheral societies were exchanged, represented, and valued, whilst policy issues investigated, discussed, reconsidered, innovated, and disseminated to reinforce the social, cultural, and economic benefits the digital age has to offer. The overall objective of AMASS was to address the marginal positioning of some European societies, groups, and communities and the under-representation and power imbalances that exist for arts and arts activities in the peripheries. AMASS addressed societal challenges, such as various forms of exclusion and poverty (cultural poverty through lack of cultural capital, material, educational, and skills poverty, as well as poor networks), whilst promoting resilience and inclusion in European regions through the strengthening of insights into ways that were inclusive of peripheral communities, their specificities, and the societal impact of arts and culture practiced by vulnerable groups. This led to a more equitable distribution of the benefits of innovation, but also to access to the arts and the fight against exclusion.
