Québec History

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.

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Cultural 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

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

Nine Hints on How to Talk to a Cultural Attaché

These nine hints on how to talk to a cultural attaché come out of an invitation from BAFA to speak at their annual conference of UK arts festivals in 2010, held in Brighton in the November of that year. I formed part of  a panel presentation on international links where I was asked to address the question: “The Ecology of the Cultural Attaché”.

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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.

Diplomacy
Diplomacy is an international system designed to regulate foreign policy and power, born many centuries ago, but which took off with the rise of the late medieval city states of Europe.

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