CHRIS TORCH is an independent cultural expert, project designer, and policy consultant, with extensive practical experience about audience engagement, artistic curation, and intercultural policy. He led the Artistic Unit at Timisoara 2021 — European Capital of Culture (Romania) during the StartUp Phase, February 2017–July 2019 (www.timisoara2021.ro).

In 1996, he founded Intercult (www.intercult.se), a production and resource unit focused on culture, ideas, and arts. He served as Artistic Director until February 2017. It was during his time with Intercult that multiple collaborations with the Macedonian playwright Goran Stefanovski were conceived and implemented, all of them with significant support from the E.U. Starting with Sarajevo (1992–1993), followed by Bacchanalia (1996), Euralien (1998), and Hotel Europe (2000-2001), this series of multi-disciplinary large-scale projects were designed and written by Stefanovski, produced and toured by Torch and his team. At the sudden death of the playwright, work had begun for another large-scale production, commissioned by two European Capitals o f Culture (Rijeka 2020 and Timisoara 2021), to be directed by the renowned Bosnian/Croatian stage director Oliver Frljic.

Torch has conceived and led other co-productions within the European Neighborhood, reflected in long-term projects: Seas, 2003-2010 (www.seas.se) and Corners, a complex partnership of cultural initiatives at the “edges of Europe,” 2011-2018 (www.cornersofeurope.org), both co-financed by E.U. Creative Europe program. He joined the artistic leadership for winning bids to become European Capitals of Culture for both Matera 2019 and Rijeka 2020. In Rijeka, he served as Program Director, until December 2016, when he was recruited to Timisoara.

Among recent tasks, he served as Senior Expert/Culture on programming the E.U. House at SXSW 2020, the influential festival of tech, ideas, culture, and society held annually in Austin, Texas. He initiated and curated a small local festival, Pisciott’Arte (www.pisciottarte.com) in a small village in southern Italy, in June/July 2021. He is presently commissioned by the Cultural Relations Platform (E.U.) to map interest by E.U.-based arrangers to present artists from South Africa and surrounding countries. He also serves as a consultant for Coimbra 2027 — one of Portugal’s candidate cities to the title of European Capital of Culture.