During the pandemic I was privileged to receive a communication from the Cultural Services of the City of Donostia in the Basque Country, to participate in an international 3-day summer school called “Reset”, that the University of the Basque Country was organising, called to review the past forty years of Basque presence on the international stage and assist in an expert conversation of where they could take things next.
Continue readingInternational Relations
WHICH IS IT TO BE? Hard power, soft power, smart power? Bilateral, influencing, cultural nation? Public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, paradiplomacy? IT’S ALL HERE
The Québec Model
or How we made a success of Québec Cultural Relations with the UK and the Nordic Countries 1992-2010.
Continue readingCultural Diplomacy or Creative Enterprise: a Definition of Terms
For the past few years I have been privileged to be invited each July to give a lecture on this topic to the MA students in arts administration at Boston University as part of their London Summer School. There is a lot of sloppy definition about around these four terms and I have used these annual sorties to gradually hone my ideas. This presentation dates from July 2016. Continue reading
Losing Cultural Diplomacy
Cultural Entrepreneurs: The New Diplomats?
This article is the full text of a presentation I made on 13 September 2012 at Goldsmiths College University of London for the 20th Anniversary conference of ENCATC. The seminar I was contributing to had been asked to consider the item: From the state to the commercial: new models of cultural relations and diplomacy.
My work regularly leads me to interrogate five notions: Continue reading
Cultural Diplomacy and Creative Mobility
This post comes from a presentation I was asked to make for the Creative Mobility session at the 2nd annual Cultural Diplomacy Seminar of the London branch of EUNIC on 1st July 2011 at Europe House. The brief was to reveal any specific thoughts, ideas, visions or theories that I may hold about creative mobility, in particular future visions of how mobility could be utilised to enhance the economic and co-production opportunities for artists and cultural producers in these difficult times. Continue reading
World Music as Cultural Diplomacy?
This article comes out of an invitation from WOMEX 2011, the World Music Expo meeting that October in Copenhagen, to address the question:
“What are the practicalities, challenges and ethics of world music as cultural diplomacy today? And is it becoming more or less relevant to the sector?”
Nine Hints on How to Talk to a Cultural Attaché
Cultural Diplomacy Web Resources
New material is being produced all the time. This is a selective list of the main resources on Cultural Diplomacy from 2012 onwards that you could tap into on the Web, some of which are not as objective as they may seem.
Cultural Diplomacy – a Rapid Primer
This information originally appeared as part of my earlier article on World Music and Cultural Diplomacy where you will find all the references. It is reproduced here in a bite-sized chunk to improve access. For a deeper read, have a look at the reading list.