From it's beginning, the linchpin of ALMOSTREAL has concentrated on seeking and supporting possibilities for collaborations between artists of different cultural backgrounds and regions. But as ALMOSTREAL got underway, it became clear that a more shared exchange between funder and artists is an unspoken yet crucial necessity. To practice what it preaches ALMOSTREAL would too need to respond directly to the needs arising from the unique collaborations rather than be driven by the generic and all-too abstract brief of 'interculturality' or 'cross-cultural collaboration'. The need for cooperation between artists and funder, comissioners or other cultural administrators is especially needed in a time when there is such a wide gulf between the policy realm and the realities of the distinct and varied cultural landscapes throughout Europe. To address this gap, the challenge for ALMOSTREAL is to build relations and between small-scale collective individual cultural producers and funding bodies such as the ECF and related organisations who have a closer access to the ministerial structures who shape the policies of the cultural scenes of local and wider Europe.

From a pragmmatic viewpoint, information designer Auke Touwslager and programmer Ivan Lazarevic were asked to join the getogether to think through, together with the team and advisors, how ALMOSTREAL's online manifestation, ALMOSTweb, could be designed and technically developed to become website that encourages this exchange by making palpable the different points of connection, motivations and spaces of collaboration happening between artists and (funding) organisations and not merely a document of activities that have already taken place.

The series of discussions took place with the advisory group (Kyong Park, Therese Kaufmann, Sher Doruff) and involved also Taja Vovk (ECF), Auke Touwslager (information designer) and Mario Campanella (moderator).