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Exploring power of the arts to bridge divides
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September 9, 2009
By Nathalie Rosa Bucher
In 1999, pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim and philosopher Edward Said founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (Wedo), bringing together musicians from Israel and Palestine. Since then, Wedo has proved that music can break down barriers previously considered insurmountable.
Realising that culture is one of the world's primary fault lines, the theme for this year's World Summit on Arts and Culture (WSOAC), the fourth of its kind and first to be held in Africa, is "meeting of cultures: creating meaning through the arts - the arts as facilitator or provocateur of intercultural dialogue".
The four-day summit, to be held at the Africa Museum in Joburg from September 22-25, coincides with Heritage Day and Arts Alive festival. It will explore the power of arts and culture to bridge historical, social, economic and political divides.
The programme reflects the fact that the arts can neither disassociate themselves from the political status quo, nor the state of the world economy.
"The summit, the World Cup of the Arts, is held every three years, primarily for members of the International Federation of Arts and Culture Agencies (IFACCA) and for related public policy makers and funders in the arts to reflect on the current state of the world and its relevance to the arts and arts policy in the next ensuing period," says Mike van Graan, award-winning playwright and programme director for the summit.
Artists, NGOs and civil society participate in the programme and the National Arts Council of South Africa (NAC) awarded a number of bursaries. Cultural activities will take place throughout the four-day event that will bring plenty of genres together: music, theatre, dance, literature, film and the visual arts.
The summit offers policymakers, cultural bodies, funding agencies as well as artists an opportunity to network, exchange experiences and discuss a wide range of topics, such as the effects of the global financial crisis on funding cultural projects, traditional culture versus modernity and creativity, artistic freedom and political independence, ways of implementing the Unesco Convention on the Promotion and Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, among others.
It is estimated that the fourth World Summit on Arts and Culture, a project of the IFACCA hosted by the NAC, will attract about 500 delegates from 70 countries ranging from Mongolia to Morocco, Kenya to Colombia and Finland to Fiji.
"The main challenge has been to find an interesting range of speakers from around the world who collectively reflect the intercultural theme of the conference and to ensure the topics are generally addressed by people from different cultural experiences and worldviews," Van Graan affirms.
Every day, sessions on a plethora of topics and workshops will be held. Drs Njabulo Ndebele and Stojan Pelko of the Slovenian Ministry of Culture will be among the keynote speakers, opening the first day and exploring how the arts can be used as a vehicle for crossing cultural divides.
Seeing that the summit will be held on the African continent for the first time, the NAC launched the African Dialogue on the Arts Initiative as part of the build-up to the summit last year. Designed as an information-sharing platform, the initiative plays an important role in ensuring that dialogue and networking outcomes from the world summit will impact positively on creative sectors on the African continent.
Event organisers hope this global gathering will be a fertile ground for key debates to be initiated, for visionary ideas to be planted and for networks to be consolidated, so that the summit is not be an end in itself, but a catalyst that will leave a lasting legacy for the global arts fraternity, and in this instance, for the African arts sector in particular.
"We hope to host delegates from about 30 African countries at the summit and to project African leadership, ideas and perspectives on to a global stage. We'd like the summit to leave a lasting legacy for African creative practitioners, launch particular interventions like a rotating African cultural capital and accessing global markets for African artists," Van Graan says.
For more information on the fourth World Art Summit and ArtSpeak, a series of dialogues held with arts practitioners in the run-up to the summit, see www.art summit.org
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