All Talk: A workshop on public programming as discourse production

This case study provides an account of the key insights from the international workshop ALL TALK: Institutional Discourse, Exclusions and the Politics of Gathering held in Drugo More, Rijeka, from May 25–26th, 2025. Public programming has long served as a vehicle for cultural institutions to engage audiences through a variety of discursive formats beyond exhibitions, catalogues and more traditional research outputs. Forms of public programming range from the classically delivered speaker talks and symposia to gallery education programmes and more experimental pedagogical initiatives such as artist-led workshops, summer schools, world cafés, reading clubs, speakers marathons, citizens’ assemblies, and many more. The workshop brought together fifteen participants who work on public programming in institutions, educational and cultural spaces across Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Lithuania, Palestine, and the United Kingdom. The insights from the workshop are arranged in three sections: (1) ‘Both Sides Now: Liberal Paradigms of Public Discourse’, which critically examines the limits and harms of mainstream forms and conceptual frameworks to organize public discourse, such as neutrality; the platform; and the debate; (2) ‘From Civility to Control: Colonial Legacies and the Militarisation of Public Programming’ aims to show the extent to which institutions of organized state violence have shaped what can be known, said and shared publicly and (3) ‘Counter-Genealogies of Public Programming’ revisits alternative histories of caring for public gathering and exchanges from the perspective of autonomous institutions, new forms of partnerships between the public sector and civil society and pedagogical experimentations rooted in social movements. This Case Study will be of interest to curators, cultural programmers, educators who want to examine comparative practices and alternative forms of public programming across Europe and to critically examine the histories, contexts and limits to public programming in the current conjuncture.