Spirits trump World Cup at World Summit on Arts & Culture

The 3rd World Summit on Arts and Culture was co-hosted by Arts Council England (ACE) and the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA). The Summit theme was Transforming Places, Transforming Lives; speakers addressed the transformative power of culture – in terms of individual experience, places and economies – and how culture can drive regeneration. The event was attended by delegates from over 50 countries. For presentations and upodates Go to the Learning Academy to learn and explore the Creative Economy Options for the Post Pandemic Planet with Dr Kris Rampersad request seminar, workshop, webinars, courses or creative materials custommade to your interests, locale, sector or industry at the Academy GloCaL Knowledge Pot www.krisrampersad
World Summit repositions arts & culture

Clear role in governance and sustainability defined 

football and well-played alcohol
will break down every social wall.

By Dr Kris Rampersad

From WM Herbert, Handmade

(For the World Summit of Arts and Culture, June 2006)

If culture is to be defined as the product of human interactions, the place of the human in a world traumatised by diminishing social, environmental, political and equitable economic relations was at the core of the World Summit on Arts and Culture.

Held in Newcastle/Gateshead, England from June 14 to 18, 2006 through sponsorship by the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies, the Arts Council of England and the Commonwealth Foundation, the Summit saw arts and culture practitioners and activists in dialogue with policy makers, planners and supporters.

In keeping with the theme “transforming people, transforming lives,” some 500 Summit participants grappled with challenges of helping Governments and decision makers to recognise the position of culture and the arts in regenerating societies’ physical and social environments and economies. Effectively, they invited revision in conceptualisation, approaches, and methods that have so far dominated decision-making, which, in the general division of labour functions and responsibilities, have left regeneration and sustenance to the sciences, economics, politics and the hard-core world of doers – not dreamers.

Skepticism that the arts has a place in this isn’t altogether unfounded, given that artistic development has traditionally leaned on philanthropy, the generosity of supporters, donors, endowments, and other the like – polar opposites, surely, to, notions of sustainability.

But some 30 presenters outlined working examples of how, when well-directed, the cultural industries can sustain societies: from use of architecture to reduce delinquency in a district in Houston, to development of a district in Ethiopia by indigenous craft, to how the Carnival festival from Trinidad and Tobago has evolved to global proportions represented in some 150 countries around the world and involving a range of artistic talents and skills.  Participants were also exposed to the UK’s Creative Partnerships that effected regeneration through art, architecture, music, design, theatre and film. In Kielder, for example, art and architecture such as the Belvedere and Skyspace combine with the local landscape, riverscape and skyscape to bring the natural environment into sharper human focus, while encouraging environmental protection and reviving the district’s tourist economy.

From an unchallenged premise that more people participate in culture, than vote, the Summit asserted the potential of culture and the arts in providing for basic human needs of food, shelter and clothing, while retaining its traditional role in nourishing minds. In its easy capacity to support co-existence and accommodate divergent views, polar opposites, diversity and difference through its metaphors and similes, borrowings and samplings, and general artistry, arts and culture were seen to hold key solutions to minimizing the negative impact of the conflicts between economic development and sustainability, technological advancement and traditional practices, nature and nurture that result in social and economic inequalities, disempowerment, and ethnic strife.

The exchange of project and ideas for processes of execution, as well as methods of quantifying input and outputs from arts and culture-based projects were stimulating and inspiring. NewcastleGateshead proved the ideal incubator for this global mishmash of thinkers and doers.  De-hyphenated and brought together to create one of the world’s most successful stories of the potential of arts and culture for not only economic regeneration but social cohesion of “rival districts”, these districts are now joined by the hip, as it were, in the Sage Centre where the Summit was located. In all of this, participants found time to create a World Choir and a Summit Song, A Poem – an extract from which is cited above – a drama; share nail-biting moments of the FIFA World Cup, and take a sneak peak into Hollywood’s Hogsworth, through the hospitality of the Duchess of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle where parts of the JK Rowling’s Harry Potter movies were filmed.