The International Award UCLG - Mexico City - Culture 21, coorganized by Mexico City and the Committee on Culture of UCLG, recognises leading cities and individuals that have distinguished themselves through their contribution to culture and sustainable cities. The Award also recognises the leadership of Mexico City on culture, and local cultural policies, as a pilar of sustainable development. The Award has two categories: "City or Local/Regional Government" and "Individual".

The first edition of the Award took place in 2013-2014, and awarded the City of Belo Horizonte, as well as Manuel Castells and Farida Shaheed as for the 'Individual' category. The second one took place in 2015-2016 and awarded ex-aequo the Cities of Timbuktu and Vaudreuil-Dorion, and Jon Hawkes and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, as for the 'Individual' category.

We are proud and happy to announce that the third edition is currently on going. The call for this third edition (2017-2018) has been open from 2 November 2017 to 16 March 2018. The Secretariat of the Committee on Culture of UCLG received 99 applications from cities and local governments from across the world. A map, as well as the abstracts of each one of these 99 candidacies are now available on our dedicated website to the Award.

Our International Jury will now examine all the candidacies, in the course of April and May 2018.
The winners of the third edition of the International Award UCLG - Mexico City - Culture 21 will be announced at the UCLG Executive Bureau in Strasbourg (23-26 May 2018).

The Award Ceremony, as for the previous editions, will take place in Mexico City on 18-20 October 2018. This year, it will also be the occasion to celebrate an International Seminar on "Cultural Rights in the City", as well as the 15th annual meeting of the Committee on Culture of UCLG.

The SOAS World Languages Institute (UK), Mercator Research Centre, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Social and Language Documentation and the Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) will organise the International Conference on “BIG Cities, Small LANGUAGES” in Berlin, Germany, on 14-16 November 2018, at the ZAS in Berlin, Germany. Check out the call for papers related to the event. Deadline for submissions: 15 July 2018.

The special edition of the Thomson Reuters Foundation on urban issues, known as place, recently released the article "Artists hope U.S. court ruling will help them defend street art", signed by Carey Biron and including very interesting insights towards the recognition and the protection of street art in cities.

NEXUS / Open Sessions take form of active meeting, in which to discuss, empower and draw attention to case studies regarding hybridisation between neighbourhood development and artistic practices, including debates, exchange of experiences and roundtables. To be held on 29-30 June 2018 in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain), and organised by ID-Idensitat.

Check out the call for papers, with deadline on 25 May 2018.

Check out the two new publications of Les Arts et la Ville network building on the Agenda 21 for Culture: "Le Petit Guide d'Appropriation de l'Agenda 21 de la Culture" and "Le Petit Guide d'implantation de l'Agenda 21 de la Culture" (both only available in French).

On 26 March 2018, the cities of Geneva, Mosul, Timbuktu, Lund, Strasbourg, Vienna and Erbil adopted and signed the Geneva Declaration on 'Human Rights and Cultural Heritage: committed cities working together', in presence of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein.

The Geneva Declaration was drafted by a group of international experts with the collaboration of the Observatory of Diversity and Cultural Rights. It will be disseminated and promoted to as many cities and local governments as possible.

See also the website of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

The University of Maiduguri (Borno State, Nigeria) will organise the Maiden International Conference from 14-17 November 2018. In this context, a call for papers on 'Cultural Sustainability, Performance and the Sustainable Development Goals in Time of Crisis' was released and will be open until 30 April 2018.

Culture Action Europe, in collaboration with the Budapest Observatory and CAE members and other partners, launched a new report entitled 'The Values and Values of Culture', collecting relevant evidence substantiating the impact of culture across a wide range of EU policy.

An executive summary of this report is also available.

The European budget faces a tough challenge to fund more with less. As the negociations over the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) move forward, Culture Action Europe launches the #Double4Culture #Commit1% campaign, calling the European cultural sector to become loud and visible and support their demands to double the budget for culture in absolute terms, and ensure that at least 1% of the next MFF is allocated to culture across policy fields and funding programmes.

If you believe that culture brings EU added value and deserves additional European finding, join the campaign!

Sign the manifesto here.

Learn more on the position of CAE on the post-2020 MFF "A shared European future is only possible with sustainable financial support for culture" here.
 

#Double4Culture
#Commit1%

From 28 February to 2 March 2018, the City of Cuenca hosted the Continental Forum on Intermediary Cities: Latin-America "towards the Agenda 2030" (information in Spanish only).
We took part to the following sessions:

   - Thematic session: Citizen Participation and Rights regarding Sustainability of Intermediary Cities
     and Regions.
      Thursday 1 February 2018, 11:30-13:00.
      Salón de la Ciudad.
      With the participation of Mrs. Clarisa Ruiz-Correal, Lecturer, University of Bogotá.

   - Parallel session (no. 8): Culture in Sustainable Cities: Learning with Culture 21 Actions.
      Thursday 1 February 2018, 16:15-17:45.
      Museo de la Ciudad.
      With the participation of Mr. Antoine Guibert, expert on Pilot Cities of the Agenda 21 for Culture; and
      Mrs. Clarisa Ruiz-Correal, Lecturer, University of Bogotá.