Last month Abu Dhabi hosted the UNESCO World Conference on Culture and Arts Education, a three-day beanfeast for around 1,000 culture and education stakeholders from around the world – including 90 ministers of education and/or culture and 125 other representatives of UNESCO Member States, along with experts, policymakers and lobbyists from NGOs, UN agencies, academia and the private sector. They were all in town to discuss and then adopt a ‘Framework on Culture and Arts Education’ that could apply universally.
Therein lies the problem, of course – the goals and delivery systems for education in general differ widely from one country to another. So while the final communiqué outlining said framework is pretty anodyne (see below), the real value of conferences like this is to be found in the breakouts and the informal discussions where experience and best practice can be exchanged.
The conference’s programme did have seven themes which suggests the broad direction of travel, though. ‘Equitable access to culture and arts education’ was the goes-without-saying biggie, but then several societies (a number UNESCO member states among them) could be accused of not delivering just or even-handed access to many aspects of social and political life.
The other themes also beg a few questions. ‘Quality and relevant lifelong and life-wide learning in and through cultural diversity’; ‘skills to shape resilient, just and sustainable futures’; and ‘institutionalisation and valorisation of culture and arts education ecosystems’ all seem highly commendable and difficult to deliver, though these are activities amenable to shared best practice. ‘Culture and arts education through digital technologies and artificial intelligence’ is very specific and should be more attainable; ‘monitoring, researching and data’ should also be doable without debate.
The last one, ‘partnerships and financing in support of culture and arts education’, is an elephant in the room – how to pay for it all. The implication is that the state shouldn’t be the sole supplier of the cash required, which puts the onus on philanthropy, commercial relationships, and other spinoffs from market capitalism. None of this was mentioned in the report that the conference produced, of course.
We may yet see some actual recommendations on policies and creative practices, but there’s no guarantee that all attendees would feel willing or able to sign up to every specific that emerges. So right now we have to make do with that Final Draft of the Framework.
This is hard work to read (it could do with a good editor and fewer words) and some of it comes across like ChatGPT trying to shoehorn every possible cultural platitude into a statement that only the barbarous could argue with. Try this, for instance:
There’s also some evidence of special pleading. This collision of possible competing goals reads like a classic committee compromise: “education systems should harness the potential of culture and arts education to strengthen civic engagement and democratic participation, improve other subject learning and develop creativity and the ability to innovate, such as through a Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) approach, reinforcing writing, reading and speaking skills, and nurturing social and emotional skills …”
Other key takeaways from the Framework report, in brief:
Some of the delegates stayed on for the Culture Summit Abu Dhabi at the end of the month, which included a meeting of culture ministers from a dozen countries under the umbrella of the inaugural Mondiacult Ministerial Dialogue (above). This isn’t the same as the full Mondiacult conference, which is more properly the Unesco World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development; that can claim to be the world’s most important cultural policy gathering, and it last took place in Mexico City in 2022.
Mondiacult is important because it’s a decision-making meeting that helps shape the world’s cultural policies and especially the relationship between culture and development. Clearly there’s some crossover here with the Abu Dhabi conference on culture and education; but Mondiacult does have a very specific goal, and it’s one that was restated by the participants in the Ministerial Dialogue – to get culture recognised as one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
This is actionable and attainable. It also makes sense; at one level, arts and culture can provide economic value. And more broadly, culture aids SDGs in areas like health, education and the environment; local customs and traditional knowledge are relevant in promoting health programmes, local and traditional products are useful for sustainable production, and so on.
So Mondiacult 2022’s final declaration, reiterated by the Mondiacult Ministerial Dialogue last month, called for culture to be recognised as “a global public good” and to be integrated “as a specific goal in its own right in the development agenda beyond 2030”.
If the UN adopts this, the sustainable development agenda post-2030 will change how development agencies and funders deal with culture and how the relationship between culture and development is understood. The result could/should be a greater emphasis on culture and the arts, and that could/should translate into more appreciation and more funding.
The next stop on the UN conference round is where this might all play out, the Summit of the Future to be held next September. It’s stated aim is to get some unanimity on how the much-documented agendas and aspirations of the UN can be delivered, and a change to the SDGs to include culture could well be part of that.
The Final Draft of the global Framework for Culture and Arts Education is available for download here.
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