Research and advocacy for Flemish cultural journals

Folio, the umbrella organization for Flemish cultural, literary and heritage magazines, organized a public event ‘on the state of magazines’ in December 2018 in Brussels that brought together policy makers and a diverse range of interested parties in discussing the role magazines play in our societies. This event aimed at helping to inform policy makers about the vision Folio has been developing over the years.

Advocacy works best when it is backed up by research. For the event, Folio made use of the European Cultural Journals Study, the quantitative study of Europe’s cultural journals landscape that was commissioned by Eurozine and conducted by the University of Groningen, and translated parts of it into Dutch. The study aimed to define and map cultural journals, their practices, motivations and the challenges in the field.

Folio is the umbrella organization for Flemish cultural, literary and heritage magazines. Currently, it has 38 members, all of them print publications with an independent editorial line. The network regularly organizes ‘moments of reflection’, jointly with the network’s members as well as in smaller groups, and both internally and publicly.

The organization voices the joint interests of its members with the government, the general readership and with all possible interested parties. Both internally and externally, Folio operates as a platform for networking and the sharing of knowledge on diverse aspects of publishing periodicals. As its prime goal, Folio aspires to make the importance of cultural, literary and heritage magazines as chambers of reflection more visible to the general public.

Read and download the study here

Learn more about Folio here