Learning through cultural activities is a strategic area which ought to receive broader attention from the European Union, national governments and regional leadership.

In earlier studies and policy recommendations representatives of national governments have been chasing synergy effects between education and culture. Unfortunately the scope has been narrowed down to almost only focusing on the possibilities of strengthening the role of cultural activities – preferably art – in formal education, and has had a tendency to regard culture as something which should be learnt. The only competence which has been addressed in this thinking has therefore been cultural awareness and creativity. The potential of cultural activities for other competences such as social and civic competences and learning to learn has not been explored.

This is not satisfactory to the cultural sector and should not be so to society at large as the potential of synergy between education and culture is much larger and broader and may effectively be a central and normal part of  capacity building through both development of competences and social cohesion.

In this paper the empirical material has been collected by the cultural sector in Europe itself. This is important as the sector has the unique competence to look beyond the trivial images of cultural engagement. The task is to find examples which, in an illustrative way, could show the extraordinary potential of learning through cultural engagement.

The result of the analysis of the examples collected is that:

1. The cultural sector is capable of producing effective pedagogical programmes which are original as they are based on the engagement with culture;
2. The cultural sector creates learning activities which reach people in a true and real lifelong and life wide meaning; and
3. The cultural sector offers learning of several key competences and cultural awareness is just the tip of the competence iceberg.