In the backstage of IFACCA´s 4^th world arts and culture summit just starting off today in Johannesburg, South Africa, a passionate debate on intercultural dialogue is already going on with echoes in the internet.

The ground for this heated discussion is the interesting background material, revisited on my last post, including Danielle Cliche and Andreas Wiesand (ERICArts) discussion paper on intercultural dialogue through the arts and culture? and consequent more recent Mike van Graan´s discordant review on this concept on the summit blog.

In the last years, intercultural dialogue has been turned into a buzz word and extensively used to talk about cultural policy and EU integration. Yet this term is surrounded with controversies and doubts. What is intercultural dialogue about? What does it mean in the different European countries and worldwide? What can it lead to at the policy level? What can we actually expect and achieve with this ideal type? How does it help moving on from theory to action? Academically speaking, the heuristic capabilities of this notion are yet to be proven.

Several other studies and initiatives have been trying for some time already to answer some of these questions. Here follows a short list of different voices and resources to acknowledge what is at stake.

- The ERICArts study for the European Commission: Sharing Diversity: national approaches to intercultural dialogue in Europe, which preceded the above discussion paper;

- The Platform for Intercultural Europe development process and initiatives, notably the “Rainbow paper: intercultural dialogue from practice to policy and back” and Panorama, a resource collection on intercultural dialogue.

Finally, on the discordant voices side, do not miss:

- Dragan Klaic´s paper “Seeking to Make Sense of Intercultural Dialogue Year 2008”, from 2006 already, when the European Year was about to be designed and this scholar adverted for the danger of engaging in empty rhetoric instead of investing on improving citizens intercultural competences for real.

Fortunately, in nowadays digital culture, this summit backstage discussion is no longer confined to the event premises, but it is opened to us all. So I encourage you again to reflect and participate in this discussion by adding your comments here bellow, at the summit’s blog or at the Rainbow paper public consultation website.

Image: view from "Limited Resources", Oleg Dergachov