„UNESCO Talk: Rethinking cultural policy: Learning from International Experience“ dives deep into the UNESCO Global Report „Re|Shaping Policies for Creativity – Adressing culture as a global public good” with thematic analysis on chosen chapters, making it tangible for the Austrian context.
The UNESCO Global Report demonstrates how the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005) is implemented worldwide. The third edition (2022) captures cultural policy trends as well as global movements within the cultural sector and clearly shows that the current crises have longer-term consequences for art and culture. Inequalities that have already intensified locally, as well as globally, threaten to grow even further.
Ten experts from the fields of art, culture, and science have dedicated themselves to the UNESCO Global Report with the aim of making it tangible in the Austrian context. What can we learn from international experience? Where is there a need for action? The publication “Rethinking cultural policies. Learning from international experiences” collates the ten experts’ analytical reports, which were written partly in English and partly in German. The focus is on three selected topics: Social Conditions and Precarity | Sustainable Regional Development | Global Asymmetries & Artistic Mobility.
These expert analyses were presented at a cultural policy conference on 13 December 2022 in Vienna and discussed in interdisciplinary teams. This format brought artists and cultural workers as well as representatives of civil society and academia into conversation with each other. From artistic, scientific, and activist perspectives, they highlighted the UNESCO Convention’s importance for sustainable and fair cultural policy.
The results of the analyses provide a concrete insight into the UNESCO Global Report “Reshaping Policies for Creativity”. The authors present recommendations for cultural policy stakeholders in Austria and focus on the fundamental condition of the UNESCO Convention: diverse forms of cultural expressions can only be protected and promoted if cultural policy is reinvented in a new and courageous manner.