"During the Covid 19 pandemic, a digital transformation happened in all spheres of life, including cultural relations. The DICE Digital R&D Fund emerged in this context as part of a wider Digital Skills Programme, an effort by the British Council to keep the flow of international cultural exchanges
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going. Hence, the overarching question of this research: what can international cultural relations (CR) look like online based on the experience of the fund? [...] The fund has shown that it is possible to create new, strong collaborations and team work digitally, to do so more cheaply and for some at least, also more efficiently. Through their experience in the fund, a sense of a universal ‘we’ developed among many Digital Partners (DPs). They recognised that despite differences from one country to another, people faced similar problems in working for social change and in experiencing the pandemic. Although for many DPs, the experience of the fund did not change how they thought of other cultures, they learnt new things about other countries and sometimes also about their own. This challenged their assumptions about these countries and recognising that they were, after all, stereotypes." (Executive summary, pages 6-7)
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"This paper sets out to challenge the dominant narrative of the creative economy as a new option for developing countries. The much-vaunted growth rates proclaimed by UNCTAD’s Creative Economy Programme have slowed, and are seen to apply to a particular kind of manufactured good, as well as being
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overwhelmingly dominated by Asia, and especially China. This paper tries to unpick the dominant creative economy model of entrepreneurship, creative human capital and open market opportunity and suggests that – other than in East Asia – it is business as usual for the Global North. The creative economy not only fails to deliver its promise of development but has profound consequences for local cultures, caught up in an ever more global web of exploitation driven by the new digital platforms. We need to return to the earlier concerns of ‘culture and development’ now fully aware of the downsides, as well as the potential, of cultural economies in an uncertain global landscape." (Page 1)
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"In this paper, I examine the aims and motivations behind the EU’s audiovisual assistance programs to countries in the Global South, using data from policy documents and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with program managers and administrative staff in Brussels. These programs prioritize forms
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of audiovisual content that are locally specific, yet globally tradable. Furthermore, I argue that they have an ambivalent relationship with traditional notions of international development, one that conceptualizes media not only as a means to achieve economic development and human rights aims, but as a form of development itself." (Abstract)
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"Este trabajo analiza el estado de situación de la cooperación española, en el contexto de la evolución de la agenda internacional de desarrollo, para preguntarse por su impacto e implicaciones futuras en el ámbito de la cultura. Se trata de detectar los desafíos que tiene la cooperación cult
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ural para concretarse en un entorno digital, además de y más allá de la crisis. Dado que se aspira a superar la mirada simplemente nacional, se incluyen las visiones y opiniones de un grupo de expertos y dirigentes oficiales iberoamericanos. Un balance crítico permite afirmar que la cooperación oficial en general, y en materia de cultura en particular, no parecen ser prioridad para el Gobierno. De hecho, se las está sometiendo a una reorientación política y económica, basada en una drástica reducción presupuestaria y una estrategia desdibujada, que ignora el camino transitado. Se concluye que la cooperación cultural debe repensarse para reubicarse en un escenario mayoritariamente digital pero orientándose, al mismo tiempo, hacia el objetivo de la promoción y protección de la diversidad cultural." (Página 4)
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"The article presents the main results of the investigation, ‘Current Situation and Prospects of Spanish Cooperation in Culture and Communication with the Rest of Ibero-America, 1997–2007’. The text offers an overview of the initiatives which took place during the period studied, by country, c
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ultural and media sectors, agents involved, and type of activity. Spain’s role in terms of cooperation in culture and communication is analysed, and a reflection on the possibility of building an Ibero-American cultural space appropriate to the new digital scene is also included. Although Ibero-America has traditionally been a privileged geopolitical space for Spanish cooperation policy, this was not developed until well into the new millennium, evolving from simplistic and rhetorical visions based on instrumental conceptions of culture and communication to a gradual recognition of the fact that cooperation is much more than the classical actions of dissemination and promotion of Spanish cultural products." (Abstract)
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"This study provides a summary of the state of implementation of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions of 2005. Focusing on fields in which the EU is expected to provide leadership or coordination, it is intended to provide ideas and long-term
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guidance on implementing the Convention. For that purpose, it analyses the obligations set out by this treaty. It assesses various practices in implementing the UNESCO Convention from a legal and practical viewpoint, and identifies challenges and measures to help achieve the objectives of this instrument." (Abstract)
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"La cultura-comunicación, más que promover la integración de países, debe buscar la integración de ciudadanos, trabajando los denominadores comunes definidos en las Declaraciones Universales de los Derechos Humanos, Pueblos Indígenas y Medio Ambiente. Es éste el capítulo más deficitario de
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nuestra cooperación y el que exige mayores esfuerzos. Cultura y comunicación deben servir para promover el diálogo de los ciudadanos de ambas orillas potenciando su encuentro e intercambiando conocimientos, inquietudes, ideas, ambiciones y folklores; en suma, tejiendo complicidades que superen recelos históricos más allá de querellas políticas, a veces de exclusiva propiedad de los gobiernos. Para ello es necesario establecer un plan en la UE que atienda y coordine líneas multilaterales y bilaterales. Una política común en cultura-comunicación exige financiación comunitaria y coordinación de las políticas bilaterales para generar sinergias, ampliando cualitativa y cuantitativamente las propuestas de EUROMED. Ésta sería la primera propuesta, abrir una línea de financiación en cooperación específica desde la UE para Marruecos, Argelia y Túnez en cultura-comunicación partiendo de la consideración de que muchas de estas medidas deben tener una consecuencia en el conjunto de los seis países y la UE. El cambio necesario debe buscar beneficiar a la ciudadanía más que a los Estados y al capital." (Página 54-55)
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"La investigación que se presenta en estas páginas tuvo un doble objetivo: por un lado, estudiar la cooperación española, bilateral y multilateral, con un seleccionado conjunto de países de iberoamericanos en materia de patrimonio y cultura clásica (artes plásticas, espectáculos en vivo) y d
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e industrias culturales (incluyendo a los medios de comunicación y a las nuevas redes digitales) durante el periodo 1997-2007. Por otro, conocer las opiniones de destacados expertos (gestores, creadores, académicos) sobre los futuros lineamientos de las políticas y las estrategias de cooperación en cultura y comunicación en Iberoamérica." (Página 15)
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"Las Industrias Culturales (IC) aparecen hoy como el centro nuclear en donde se juega el destino de nuestras identidades, nuestros valores compartidos y la calidad de nuestras democracias. Es también, por eso mismo, el espacio fundamental para los intercambios interculturales, en donde se dirime el
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grado de diversidad efectiva de nuestras culturas, su capacidad de abrirse, de entenderse e integrar al otro en uno mismo. Es, finalmente, un conjunto de sectores, ramas y relaciones económicas de cada vez mayor peso en el crecimiento económico y el empleo de las naciones y las regiones de países. Las IC constituyen así, por múltiples razones entrecruzadas, el centro ineludible de las políticas públicas culturales y de comunicación pero también, inseparablemente, de las estrategias privadas y de las políticas industriales que las apoyan. Y ello tanto en el terreno nacional como en la arena global. Cooperación y desarrollo se dan la mano pues inevitablemente con el comercio y la competencia. Entender e integrar esas múltiples caras en el espacio iberoamericano, y en las políticas que pueden consolidarlo no es ciertamente fácil. Pero esa complejidad se redobla ahora en medio de dos procesos que están transformando profundamente la realidad: la globalización de las IC, mucho más sistemática y generalizada que la del resto de la cultura; Y la pionera y acelerada digitalización de las IC, seguramente el mayor cambio que la cultura humana ha sufrido desde la aparición de los aparatos de reproducción de contenidos simbólicos, allá por la segunda mitad del Siglo XIX." (Resumen)
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"Both culture and media play important roles in the development of democratic governance, the promotion of a democratic culture and the strengthening of civil society. Culture and media can play crosscutting roles in Sida’s work, in addition to direct contributions in the areas of culture and medi
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a. A culturally sensitive approach founded on an integrated poverty analysis is desirable in all development cooperation interventions. Culture and media interventions can also contribute to the promotion of participation, dialogue and communication in interventions in other development cooperation areas. The purpose of the policy is threefold: to establish how supporting culture and media can contribute to the attainment of the goal of Swedish international development cooperation; to provide guidance for such interventions; and be the basis for increased collaboration with other areas of intervention within Swedish development cooperation (for example health, education and infrastructure)." (Introduction, page 4-5)
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"One of the significant approaches to the problem of reducing international tensions and thus liberating forces for economic and social development has been the phenomenal increase in recent years in international exchanges. These have been defined in the Unesco Handbook of International Exchanges a
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s "the movement of persons, materials and information across frontiers in such a way as to communicate ideas and knowledge by word or image". The notion of exchange, it goes on, 'împlies some degree of reciprocity, in the sense that there are two or more partners in the process and that they have a more or less mutual effect on each other, but it does not necessarily imply an exact head-to-head accounting of persons sent and received". The magnitude of exchange activity is also indicated in this publication which provides information on the activities of 295 international organizations and over 4, 750 governmental and non-governmental agencies and institutions. It also lists no fewer than 4, 600 bilateral and multilateral agreements. While these agreements are primarily the concern of the nations themselves, Unesco and other international organizations can make an important contribution to the developing strategy for surmounting the obstacles to international understanding and co-operation. The present publication attempts to describe both the needs and the difficulties in the development of cultural co-operation as well as Unesco's efforts in this field." (Introduction)
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