From 14 to 18 June, The Sage Gateshead will play host to 500 delegates from arts councils and development agencies from around the world at the third World Summit on Arts and Culture. This four-day Summit will focus on regeneration and will feature more than 30 international speakers addressing issues ranging from the role of culture in building nationhood to the ways crafts can boost local economies. Here, Sarah Gardner explains the reason for the Summit and Mark Robinson explains what the Summit means to Newcastle Gateshead and the North East.
The World Summit on Arts and Culture in Newcastle Gateshead will be the third Summit at which the worlds leading arts development agencies have gathered to debate issues and challenges in the support of arts and culture. Held every two to three years, World Summits are rare opportunities for face-to-face sharing of expertise in the support and promotion of art and culture.
At the first Summit held in Canada in 2000, delegates voted to establish the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA), a federation of public arts and culture development agencies. Its main members are national government and quasi-government cultural agencies (such as arts councils and ministries of culture), that provide funds and develop policies for stimulating culture, art and creativity. It may still be relatively young, but the federation, with its 100 members in 60 countries, has already made an impact. IFACCAs collaborations have helped to create the first global compendium on the impact of the arts in education, The WOW Factor, and to develop a global whos who of cultural policy, ConnectCP (www.connectcp.org). Through these major projects, together with its ongoing research programme, fortnightly bulletin and smaller international meetings, IFACCAs reputation has grown steadily.
The third World Summit in Newcastle Gateshead will explore the role of art and culture in regeneration a topic in which Newcastle Gateshead has an international reputation. The concept of regeneration has become part of the cultural policy lexicon. National, local and city governments around the world are implementing and collaborating on regeneration initiatives based on art and culture. For those in the cultural sector, there is much to welcome in this flurry of activity. The value and the profile of the sector have been raised, especially in the minds of politicians, bureaucrats and administrators, and cultural and creative sectors are currently riding a wave of unprecedented global public interest. But with this higher profile come hazards. Concern has been expressed in the cultural sector about a rising instrumentality in policies and programmes, about the exploitation of culture for non-cultural objectives at no benefit to art and culture themselves: what John Holden (Capturing cultural value, Demos 2004) describes as the tail wagging the dog.
Next months World Summit provides an opportunity for leading decision makers to explore art and cultures regenerative effects from an arts and cultural policy perspective. With art and cultures regenerative impacts now well documented through research and evaluation, the pressing need is to discover what works best, to hone good practice, to maximise benefits, and to ensure that regeneration projects do not overwhelm or compromise the very activity that they exploit: the arts.
If there is one thing that IFACCAs existence has demonstrated, it is that cultural policy issues such as these are global. Every national arts-support agency is grappling with issues surrounding culture and regeneration. Every agency wants to improve its policies and programmes to achieve maximum social benefit, but also to ensure that their initiatives are sensitive and sustainable in cultural terms. Armed with an international review of research into arts and culture in regeneration by academics Phyllida Shaw and Graeme Evans (which was developed in partnership with IFACCA and Arts Research Digest) Summit delegates will be in a position to tackle the issues head on.
At the last World Summit in 2003, Lee Suan Hiang, Chief Executive of the National Arts Council of Singapore, suggested that government arts agencies have little choice but to internationalise: As arts policy makers, we now have to either lead or follow our artists beyond the borders of our nations and communities. This calls for different ways of working. Previous World Summits have offered insights into good practice and alternative approaches, and encouraged collaborations. In Newcastle Gateshead, the focus will again be on the practical, on creating connections between people who, because they have command over resources, can make a difference.
Sarah Gardner is Executive Director of the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA).
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Something special has happened here which we want other people to see
At the time of going to press, delegates from 68 countries are already signed up to attend the World Summit on Arts and Culture. At Arts Council England, North East we are evangelical about our region, about the arts and about the need for the arts in England to be increasingly international, so the number of countries that will be represented at the summit thrills us. Our international policy aims to increase international connections and to increase skills in working internationally, we hope to achieve this through the Summit. Regional strategies in both culture and economic development have emphasised the need for the North East to be outward looking and entrepreneurial. We have increasingly positioned the region as a natural choice for world events and conferences helped enormously by the opening of The Sage Gateshead with its tremendous facilities.
However, the most basic reason for hosting the Summit in the North East is that we feel something special has happened here which we want other people to see and experience. We will not be talking much in the Summit about the transformation of Newcastle Gateshead and the wider North East, as we have decided to let it speak for itself. The new buildings and refurbishments in Newcastle Gateshead alone form a formidable list: The Sage Gateshead, BALTIC, Northern Stage, Seven Stories, the Centre for Childrens Books, Dance City, Live Theatre, Waygood Gallery, Discovery Museum, Great North Museum and Culturelab to name but a few.
We are sure that the Summit will be significant for the cultural sector in the North East and England. We hope there will be links and relationships created, learning and sharing, discussion and debate of our shared view that the arts and culture are key to transforming our places, our communities and our economies.
Mark Robinson is Executive Director for Arts Council England, North East