Across Europe there is a demand for institutions to engage citizens. Citizen engagement is nothing new for cultural centers. But there has never been a systematic investigation of how people engage and participate in cultural centers and of what the effects of this might be. This investigation has now been done with the European research and action project, REcCORD. At the Rethinking Cultural Participation conference in Aarhus, researchers and professionals from the European Cultural Centers, who have participated in the REcCORD project, will present their participatory methodology and findings in talks, workshops and debates.