"The International Space Station is a great achievement of human ingenuity and international cooperation, as well as a cutting-edge research facility. But the European Space Agency believes strongly that the cultural world too should have a say in the future of space exploration. We therefore want to open the ISS to a new community of artistic and cultural users," emphasises Daniel Sacotte, ESA's Director of Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration.

"This new study sets out to investigate and focus the real interest of the cultural world in the International Space Station, to generate a policy for involving cultural users in the ISS programme in the longer term and to develop a first representative set of ready-to-implement demonstrator projects in arts, culture and media," explains Dieter Isakeit, Head of the Erasmus User Centre for the International Space Station.

Isakeit, who is supervising the study on the ESA side, said, "and in order to provide potential future cultural users with the full context for their engagement with the ISS programme, the study also aims to examine and articulate the contemporary social and cultural significance of the Station in the larger sense of human space exploration."

In the course of the study, artists and cultural practitioners from a broad spectrum of disciplines are being consulted by the Arts Catalyst team on the features of the ISS that would be of interest to them, including its ground-based support facilities, such as launch sites, astronaut training facilities and national user support centres across Europe.

Under the leadership of the Arts Catalyst in London, the study team includes Leonardo-Olats (Paris, France) and Delta Utec SRC (Leiden, Netherlands), together with a Europe-wide network of cultural and space advisors.

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