The Young Researchers Conference on Cultural Policy and Cultural Diplomacy organised by Istanbul Bilgi University UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Cultural Diplomacy will be held online on 21-22 August 2020 with the aim to:

• Raising the recognition of cultural policy and cultural diplomacy based on cultural diversity in the academic arena
• Enabling young researchers who work at the main disciplines of cultural policy and cultural diplomacy to share their research findings and open them to discussion
• Creating an international sharing and interaction platform
• Identifying the common interests of the researchers from the global South and the global North and create co-working opportunities

Join Youtube to follow the Conferecne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo1LiaVl6yw

More information: https://yrc.bilgi.edu.tr/en/

The City Council of Rome, together with UCLG and its Committee on Culture, will organise a public event on next 27 July 2020 (15h00-16h30 CET) to publically present the 2020 Rome Charter on the Right to Fully and Freely Participate in Cultural Life.

The Charter is being elaborated by the City Council of Rome and the UCLG Committee on Culture, through a participatory and co-creation approach that includes various phases and consultation processes. 

The public event will aim at presenting the results of the first phase of the elaboration of the Charter, which is now available in English, French, Spanish and Italian, and it will also introduce to the next steps of the process.

In the context of the High-Level Political Forum organised by the United Nations from 7-16 July 2020, the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments, facilitated by UCLG, has convened a Local and Regional Governments' Day on 10 July 2020, from 12.30pm-17.00pm CET. 

In this context, the Vice-Mayor of Rome, in charge of Cultural Development, M. Luca Bergamo and the UN Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights, Ms. Karima Bennoune, were invited to speak in the final session, entitled "Accelerating transformation from the ground-up in a post-Covid era", where they respectively presented the 2020 Rome Charter on Cultural Rights, and reflected on cultural rights in the city in times of crisis and beyond.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdZHFdPWPow&feature=youtu.be

Creative FLIP recently published an analysis report which aims at a more crisis-resilient Access to Finance eco-system for the cultural and creative sectors.

The report elaborated by Sylvia Amann, Creative FLIP senior expert on Finance for CCI, identifies main trends and first policy recommendations.
It is based on a screening of the EU Covid19 platform www.creativesunite.eu and additional good practices identified from the EU Member States and international stakeholders.

View the report here : https://creativeflip.creativehubs.net/2020/07/06/guiding-resilient-financing-systems-for-the-ccs-creative-flip-publishes-analysis-report/

The new IAEC (International Association of Educating Cities) Monograph on "City, Culture and Education" will be presented on 2 July at 10h GMT+2 (Barcelona local time).

The session will count with interventions from Michel Vallée, former Director of Culture of Vaudreuil-Dorion; Ernst Wagner from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; Jordi Pascual, coordinator of the UCLG Committee on Culture; and Marina Canals, Secretary General of the International Association of Educating Cities.

You can register to attend the session here.

The Beethoven Pastoral Project, an initiative by the UN Climate Change and BTHVN2020, is dedicated to promoting action on climate change and the environment in this 250th anniversary year of Beethoven’s birth.

A Declaration by Artists, Musicians and Creatives was formally launched on 5 June 2020, which is the UN World Environment Day. It is available in English, German, French and Spanish, and it has been signed by more than 220 artists and cultural actors from around the world.

We invite you to promote and endorse the Declaration through this link.

The cultural mobilization of cities and local governments in the COVID-19 crisis

The humanity is facing an enormous challenge. The COVID-19 crisis has an impact in all dimensions of our lives: the public health, the labour systems, the social interaction, the political debate, the use of public spaces, the economy, the environment, and the cultural life.

COVID-19 is hitting the cultural life of our communities very severely. Libraries, memorials, community centres, museums and all cultural venues, have suffered several weeks of lockdown; some of them are still closed and some are getting ready to reopen with physical distancing measures. Performances, festivals, parades, carnivals and intangible heritage events have been cancelled, and there is still uncertainty on how these events will take place again. The online presence of cultural institutions and organisations has exponentially gorwn. Workers in the sectors, who are often in an already precarious situation (self-employed, freelancers) may be left for months without any income. The active involvement of all in the cultural life of the community is very damaged by COVID-19, and so is the welfare and the quality of our democracies.

The Committee on Culture of UCLG has elaborated a webpage on the issue. This page is updated daily and shared on social medias, using the tag #CultureCOVID-19

This page is part of the "Live Learning Experience: beyond the immediate response to the outbreak", developed by UCLG. 

The pandemic has had an immense impact on all of our lives, and the path to a new normality is in many ways still uncertain. Numerous human rights mechanisms, including Special Procedures mandates, have already raised their voices to warn about the impact of the pandemic on human rights and to provide guidance about the human rights issues to keep in mind when taking measures to counter it (see the dedicated page here).

For their next thematic reports to the General Assembly or the Human Rights Council, a group of Special Procedures mandate holders have decided to analyse more closely the effects of the crisis and have joined together to develop a questionnaire. The questionnaire is meant to assist the human rights experts to obtain information and elaborate comprehensive recommendations on the measures taken by national, federal and local governments to protect their population and ensure the enjoyment of human rights, including particular groups at risk of discrimination or social exclusion. It consists of a section with joint questions for all mandates, and specific questions for each mandate.

The Special Rapporteur in the field of Cultural Rights, Ms. Karima Bennoune, is part of this group. Her report of March 2021 to the Human Rights Council will focus on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the exercise of cultural rights and on the role of culture and cultural rights in responding to the pandemic.

The joint questionnaire is attached and can also be consulted online on this page. Questions of particular interest to the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights are published on page 9, and you are also invited to respond to the common questions.

Submissions should be sent electronically no later than 19 June 2020 to registry@ohchr.org, using the email title: “Response to joint questionnaire of special procedures”.

The campaign #culture2030goal has released a Statement on Culture and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Its official launch took place on 21 May 2020, the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development. The date illustrates the commitment of the campaign to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and the need to ensure that culture is at the heart of the UN Decade of Action for the Sustainable Development Goals.

Check out the concept note of the meeting for more information.

The UCLG Culture Committee and the City Council of Rome have been working together to elaborate "The 2020 Rome Charter. The Right to Participate Fully and Freely in Cultural Life is vital to our Cities and Communities", as a contribution to the global conversation on culture and development.

The Charter was first launched on 29 May 2020, on the occasion of the Executive Bureau of UCLG and it was approved at the World Council of UCLG on 13 November 2020.

The Charter is the result of a large consultation process that included several online expert meetings and seminars with key cities, organisations, experts and networks, organised between April and October 2020, finalizing with the Rome Hybrid Conference held in Rome from 1 to 3 October 2020, where the Charter was officially presented. The photos of the conference have been collected in a dedicated photo gallery, and the #2020RomeCharter hashtag will allow you to read about the event in social media.

The final document is available in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Croatian, Russian, Arabian and Turkish.

This interview between Luca Bergamo and Emilia Saiz, facilitated by Teatro di Roma, explains the Charter.

More info: www.2020romecharter.org/