Summer is almost gone and temperatures might be decreasing around the Mediterranean region as the many tourists head back north.
2008 is the Year of Intercultural Dialogue in Europe and when UNESCO decided that Languages Matter worldwide. Celebrating multilingualism and diversity of expressions is contributing gradually to bring the arts and culture sector along other civil society organisations from different fields to engage together with the political process - as example, see the interesting development of the Rainbow Platform. The recent implementation of the European Commission’s Agenda for Culture in a Globalized World has also been pushing this empowerment and interaction forward. The European Year of Creativity and Innovation will follow next, in 2009, so, there is room for the sector to keep on speaking out and joining forces.
The Mediterranean has been since the Barcelona Process a unique laboratory for the arts and culture. This field has seen its role being recognised in what comes to external relations and cooperation programmes in this part of the world, where the quest for dialogue and human rights is at stake. At least, estimating on the number of times that “culture”, “inter-cultural dialogue” and “mobility” appear in the various policy documents, intervention areas and projects of several NGO´s when the focus is the Euro-Med.
In the case of the Union pour la Meditérranée (UMP), created this summer, besides some vague references to the “dialogue des cultures”, in what comes to concrete projects, only education and research were contemplated in the Euro-Med university support proposal.
Yet research is indeed a topic not to be forgotten, especially taking into account the efforts of the Roberto Cimetta Fund, along IETM Point Focus Med and the ECF Med reflection group, among others, towards the creation of a Mediterranean cultural observatory by supporting and analysing circulation and the status of artists in a region where movement and expressions are not that free.
Despite the fall, Culture Action Europe chose Marseille to set its annual conference, this end of October. The main discussion themes will be the place of culture in the Union’s external relations and the role of civil society in developing Europe’s cultural policies, paying special attention to regions and Euro-Med in particular. The current EU Presidency is also organising in November 4-6, in this same city, a Mediterranean Civil Forum on the Euro-Med Intercultural Dialogue.
For the moment, on both sides of the Mediterranean, cultural and artistic operators might well make use of the existent programmes, organisations and initiatives already in course, some of them funded by the European Commission External Cooperation Office and the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures.
Euro-Med Info Centre is a great resource to get to know how to swim through these waters: legislation, policies, partnerships, networks, programmes, contacts… Explore them, make waves and keep Euro-Med hot!
Keep also an eye on the LabforCulture.org Directory section throughout this month and discover many other organisations working in this region!
NB: This new editor blog, intends, in a regular basis, to spot hot issues in European cultural cooperation, to link them to current policy developments and events and mostly to highlight active organisations – what Directory is all about!
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