CULTUROPOLIS: International days on cultural rights

May 28, 2022, 8:39 am

CULTUROPOLIS invites you to reflect on and discuss cultural rights. Join us 16-19 November, 2022 in Barcelona, Spain.

How do we define cultural rights? What kind of mechanisms do we need to guarantee them for all? Culture Action Europe’s annual Beyond the Obvious conference joins CULTUROPOLIS this year!

CULTUROPOLIS: international days on cultural rights focus on the following four areas:

Cultural work and sustainability

The framework of cultural rights also includes the right to work in the cultural sector under decent conditions. All the necessary tasks for culture must be recognised and valued, not only the most visible ones. We must approach gender, class, age, origin, and territorial inequalities, among others, that occur in cultural work from an intersectional perspective and ensure the economic, social and environmental sustainability of cultural work.

Diversities

This area tackles the diversity of identities included in cultural rights (gender, sexual, ethnic, language, origin, trajectory, etc.) and the difficulties that may occur in regard to freely experiencing this diversity.

There is a need to tackle the insufficient presence and visibility of diversities in cultural expressions and practices, as well as in participation and the decision-making capacity inherent in the design of cultural policies.

Participation and communities

There are various conditions that affect the right to participate in the city’s cultural life, as well as the various forms of participation. This area tackles the various ways of exercising cultural rights in a collective fashion, analysing the opportunities and challenges involved in experiencing culture as a community.

Digital environments

There is a direct relationship between cultural rights and digital rights. The digitalisation of culture, as well as social and economic life as a whole, has opened up new possibilities for access and participation, but also for reproducing and creating new inequalities that condition cultural rights. The circulation of content, the ability to access it and facilitate its use are all part of this area.

 

More about the Conference

The City Council of Barcelona and Culture Action Europe are jointly organising the sessions, with the collaboration of UCLG – United Cities and Local Governments. The CULTUROPOLIS programme will include discussion panels, the presentation of good practices, an academic congress and an artistic programme.

Throughout the conference, CULTUROPOLIS will showcase a selection of public, private or community projects and good practices, in order to highlight various ways of exercising cultural rights. The conference aims to foster knowledge transfer and relations between practice and research. Happenings such as the Culturopolis Marketplace will create places of dialogue, knowledge and interaction among the projects, research and people attending CULTUROPOLIS.

The speakers represent a broad range of backgrounds and practices, bringing perspectives from across European, local and grassroots levels. In addition, multidisciplinary research will be shared, ranging from topics focused on cultural space and disability to gender justice to cultural mediation for public policies. See the full list here.

The conference also presents an artistic programme which is filled with shows, concerts, interventions, radio shows, performances and artistic workshops, all related to exercising cultural rights, with the aim of raising awareness and promoting the involvement of cultural agents and the general public.

You can find more information and the full programme here.

Register here to join us in Barcelona!

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