GUIDE FOR INSTITUTIONS

Playbook for Media and Culture Institutions

A commissioning guide for organisations that want journalism to become a public encounter: a room, game, wall, exhibition, audio work, research interface, installation, workshop, or teaching format.

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Artistic Journalism gives institutions a method for hosting facts.

A newsroom publishes. An institution hosts. Between those two verbs there is a useful field: reported work that becomes a public situation, where people listen together, inspect evidence, move through a story, play a system, hear testimony, or meet a document in space.

The danger is that institutions often meet journalism through format first: a performance, exhibition, festival slot, immersive room, installation, or education programme. This guide reverses the order. Start with the evidence, then ask what public form it can honestly survive.

// WHO SHOULD USE IT

For teams that turn public issues into public encounters.

Media organisations building formats beyond the article.

Museums, festivals, theatres, galleries, and cultural institutes programming public-interest work.

Journalism schools, foundations, cities, and civic partners that need evidence-led public encounters.

// FORM ROUTES

What can an institution commission?

Route01

Room / stage

Use when presence, voice, timing, and collective attention are part of the public value.

Reakcja, Living Newspaper, Musta Laatikko

Route02

Rule system / game

Use when the story is built from pressure, scarcity, incentives, failure, money, time, or trade-offs.

BOTTLENECK, Testris, The Uber Game

Route03

Wall / exhibition

Use when evidence needs civic space, scale, repeated viewing, memory, or an inspectable public path.

Newspaper Mural, View From Somewhere, Forensic Architecture

Route04

Drawing / sound / access

Use when protection, sensory access, listening, sequence, description, or translation should shape the method.

Favela vs COVID-19, comics journalism, Auditorial

// RISK DESK

Institutional scale increases responsibility.

What evidence can be shown in public, and what must remain protected?

Who gives consent for quotation, drawing, staging, recording, modelling, archiving, or touring?

What rights are needed for the event, website, recording, teaching version, and long-term archive?

Who cannot access the room, interface, audio, installation, language, or documentation?

What happens after the opening night, festival slot, exhibition run, or campaign week?

// START PATH

Before commissioning, prepare the desk.

The guide is meant to make the first conversation sharper. It does not replace reporting, legal review, accessibility work, or production planning.

Diagnostic workshop

Bring a real story, source map, audience need, partner constraints, and one unresolved form question.

Evidence and risk map

Separate verified material, testimony, reconstruction, rights limits, uncertainty, safety, and accessibility needs.

Prototype memo

Compare at least three forms before choosing: stage, game, comic, public wall, audio, interface, immersive route, or article.

Public afterlife

Plan archive, transcript, recording, educational use, touring package, maintenance, takedown, and documentation before launch.

// CASES TO STUDY

References are prompts, not templates.

Stage

Reakcja

A live journalism format where reporting becomes a public room.

Game

BOTTLENECK

A playable report where rules carry geopolitical pressure.

Research

Forensic Architecture

Evidence rooms, models, and exhibitions as inspectable public method.

Access

Auditorial

Accessibility treated as editorial structure rather than a late layer.

// KPO / NGEU

Funded as institutional method work.

Krajowy Plan Odbudowy, Rzeczpospolita Polska and NextGenerationEU official signs

Development of Artistic Journalism as a new trend in media.

This institution-facing guide is one public output of the KPO-supported research into Artistic Journalism: a practical method for organisations that commission, host, teach, exhibit, fund, or support evidence-led public journalistic forms.

The project produces two digital guide landing pages and two downloadable PDF guides: one for journalists and creators working with facts, and one for media and culture institutions preparing responsible public encounters with reporting.

Programme

Krajowy Plan Odbudowy i Zwiększania Odporności

Component

Odporność i konkurencyjność gospodarki

Investment

A2.5.1, programme for culture and creative sectors

Segment

Sztuki wizualne

Project no.

964/KPO. STYPENDIA 2025

Period

09.2025 - 02.2026

EU funding

36 000,00 PLN brutto

Target groups and benefits

Journalists, editors, producers, media organisations, cultural institutions, foundations, journalism schools, and public partners receive practical language for commissioning, teaching, and producing evidence-led public journalistic forms.