Initiated by the Goethe-Institut, the Embassy of the Netherlands, the Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul and Institut français de Turquie, ‘Spaces of Culture’ project has been realized in cooperation with the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and Anadolu Kültür since 2018.

Spaces of Culture was initiated with the intent of supporting the arts and culture infrastructure in İzmir, Diyarbakır, and Gaziantep, prioritizing social benefit and sustainability. In addition to providing space and resources for the realization of cultural projects in all fields of arts, the project offers training and development opportunities for local organizations and cultural professionals and collaborates with artists, cultural actors, and civil society organizations. It implements comprehensive programs by collaborating with partners from the cultural scenes in Turkey and Europe. Spaces of Culture project also offers project support funds to institutions and artists from İzmir, Diyarbakır, and Gaziantep, as well as their neighboring cities, and cultural management training and a mobility program held in European cities. Additionally, the year-end conference organized in Istanbul in cooperation with ‘A Corner in the World’, which brings together participating institutions and artists from the project cities, and the showcase events, which enable the projects to circulate between cities, are among the main activities of the project. Since 2018, the Spaces of Culture project has made significant contributions to the field of arts and culture in the three cities and their surroundings with the support it provides and the programs it carries out, while also supporting the development of strong collaborations for the future.

Diyarbakır Arts Center has been the coordinator for Diyarbakır -and neighboring cities- of the Spaces of Culture project that is implemented in three cities. To date, the project has supported a total of 172 cultural projects, 56 of which were from Diyarbakır and its surroundings. Over the course of five years, the project has also facilitated nine Circulation Programs and eight Cultural Management Training Programs, which have involved the participation of 43 and 40 individuals from Diyarbakır and its neighboring cities, respectively. The showcase events organized as part of the end-of-year activities of Spaces of Culture have allowed the works produced in the three project cities to circulate among themselves; while the closing conferences, held in Istanbul every December, have provided a platform for different actors from the three cities to come together and engage in discussions.