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Length: 400-500 words maximum Title: One short title (max. 8–10 words). Keep it poetic rather than descriptive. Form: Written as a letter. Personal, specific, and non-academic. Author: The writer does not need to be the Satellite host. It can be a colleague, local cultural worker, participant, or someone connected to the Satellite in a meaningful way. Author credit: Name + one-line role/affiliation. Image: Please include one image (place, object, detail, atmosphere). No promotional posters here.
Love Letters to Culture (Deadline 11 February 2026)
At the Heart: Love Letters to Culture
This February, we’re inviting Satellites to write a love letter.
Not necessarily to a person, but to something that holds meaning within your Satellite: a location, an object, a site, an event, a fleeting moment between people, or something more abstract, like potential, hope, care, continuity.
These letters should speak to what you love about culture, why it matters where you are, and what makes your Satellite more than a programme point. We want to understand and get to know where care blossoms in your community.
The letters aim to be published on 14 February 2026 on the CAE website and posted on social media (Instagram and LinkedIn). These letters will also accompany our February communications promoting the Satellite events. Later in the year, we will publish it in the as well.
Each letter is an invitation to notice, to care, and to recognise culture as something we build, hold, and protect together.
Writing Guidelines
Example (may or may not be a sneak peek at our letter to you...)
A letter to the network, with their eyes closed
Dear butterflies,
Do you remember that day last summer? When we breathed together in the hum of the arsenal? The clinking of coffee cups being shuttled away in a back room, children running in the grass, the curtains very gently swaying in the summer air.
I looked out at all of you. The tops of each of your heads, like sea anemone, pulsating with colour and movement as you settled into your seats.
And then I saw your eyes. Hundreds of eyes. First, looking directly at me. Through me. In connection. I began to speak, to deliver the meditation, unpractised but true. And slowly, each of your eyes began to drift, each lid lowered, each eyelash fluttered to a close.
And my eyes, open, got to bear witness to it all. This alchemy that we accidentally created on that afternoon.
Somehow, the fibres of each of your bodies found a way to settle into synchronous stillness as I continued to speak. Your inhale, your exhale: I saw you all rise and fall. The energy in the room, which we created together, for those very few minutes, aligned physically in each of you.
You, who came from other storylines to join this one.
With my eyes open, the only one in the room, I caught the glimpse of what fuels us as network. For those few minutes, we were hundreds in alignment. And it made me realise if we can do that for a few moments, then we can do it for a few more. And then a few more...
Until we are not just breathing together, we are moving together.
Until we are not just moving together, we are swimming together.
Until we are not just swimming, we are soaring.
Until we are many, together.
I could see it because my eyes were open.
I hope you could feel it with your eyes closed.
Love,
m
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