Can Erol didn't set out to run a company. He set out to prove that a Sunday concert and a stranger's dinner table could belong to the same kind of culture — and that Istanbul was the city to prove it in. Today, as the founder of Project Kültür, he does exactly that in partnership with Mastercard Priceless.

The Dream

"The dream was never to open a venue or run a company — it was to stop treating culture, art, and gastronomy as three separate invitations. I wanted people to sit at one table and get all three at once. That ambition came out of Istanbul itself; the city never separates them, so why should we?"

Project Kültür started in 2021, built on an idea simple enough to fit on a napkin: every event needs a narrator who knows the subject cold, a subject specific enough to hold a room, and a sensory layer — music, food, a particular room — that turns a lecture into something people feel. Five years on, that napkin idea runs four strands of the same platform: Culture & Art, Stage, Experience Lab, and Studio.

"In the beginning, success meant filling a room. Now it means someone leaving the room having discovered a composer, a writer, or a dish they'd never have found on their own. The number of people in the seats matters less to me today than what they take out the door."

The Hard Part

"The hardest part was never the creative side — it was convincing partners that culture, art, and gastronomy could be one experience instead of three separate budget lines. Getting people to trust an unfamiliar format took longer than building the format itself."

"There were some events where we weren't sure anyone outside our own circle would show up. What kept me going was believing the idea was right even when the room was half-empty — and it wasn't long before it wasn't."

What Priceless Changed

"Working with Mastercard Priceless let us bring something very local — a small format built entirely on trust in the room — together with something global, and reach a far wider audience than we could have reached alone."

A City Best Understood on Foot

Much of Project Kültür's Istanbul lives outside any single venue. Erol treats the city itself as part of the program: a walk along the Kadıköy shoreline, the backstreets of Karaköy, the historic peninsula's skyline seen from the water. In the film, he points visitors toward that same historic peninsula — not as a checklist of monuments to photograph, but the way someone who actually lives here would move through it. It's the kind of neighborhood-level access a guidebook doesn't offer, but a local host does.

A Sunday Built Around a Piano

One Sunday a month, that access takes a specific shape at Pera Palace Hotel: Pazar Sabahı Konserleri, a classical concert held in the hotel's ballroom under the artistic direction of Serhan Bali — founder and owner of Andante, Turkey's classical music magazine, and one of the country's most respected authorities on the genre. Guests who've never sat through a full concert leave able to place a phrase of Chopin or Debussy by ear.

"It was a Sunday morning at Pera Palace, watching someone who'd never been to a classical concert recognize a piece by ear halfway through. That's the moment I started this for."

One Country, One Table

Once a month elsewhere in the city, the same idea turns up at a dinner table: Haz Buluşmaları, an evening for around thirty guests built around one country's cuisine and a reading from a writer of that same origin, hosted with literary curator Eylül Görmüş. A plate of risotto studded with clams becomes, for one night, an introduction to a body of literature a guest might never otherwise have opened.

The Next Dream

"The next dream is to take this format — a narrator, a subject, a sensory layer — beyond Istanbul, without losing the thing that makes it work here: a small room and real attention.