curious patterns #21
Tales of a culture goal in the post-2030 agenda, the challenges of outcome harvesting, and why radio DJs are the real heroes.
curious patterns is a monthly email newsletter on all things culture, impact and sustainable development, written by Kai Brennert (Twitter) from edge and story.
Not gonna lie, pretty overwhelmed right now. Not sure if it’s the flood of publications that needed to see the light of day before MONDIACULT or just the limited capacity of my little brain. Either way, curious patterns is really only a tiny glimpse of all the amazing stuff that’s out there. But hey, if anyone wants me and some colleagues to do a deep-dive on anything, just drop us a message and we’ll see what’s possible.
Welcome to new faces from TOPIA Magazine 🌐, Minor Act 🇰🇭, Bookophilia 🇯🇲, the City of Barcelona 🇪🇸, LAND 🇮🇳, IFACCA, and other folks from 🇨🇭🇫🇷🇬🇾🇬🇧🇨🇦🇵🇭. Great to have you here!
🏺 If you haven’t had your daily WTF moment yet, here you go. The Reclaiming Restitution Report makes you wanna scream at all the discursive injustice. AARGH!
🇵🇭🇮🇩 When you get two countries that value their CCIs and have the relevant cultural policies in place, an MoU to mutually promote cultural products goes a looong way.
🎮 What a time to be a student! There is now a Fortnite-based, design-thinking-utilising challenge to build inclusive and accessible housing. Lesson plan here.
🇪🇺 On The Move is at it again; this time covering cultural mobility flows for Europe’s far-away colonies, or euphemistically, outermost regions. Spoiler alert: loads of issues.
🌍 Interested in inter-African trade of CCIs and the potential of AfCFTA? Well, Afrixembank might just have THE report for you. Quartz’s got a neat overview, too.
🇺🇸 Guantanamo Bay has always been a nightmare. How to make it even more horrible? Fuck with prisoners’ freedom to take their art with them or gift it to people…
🇳🇬 Afrobeat star goes angel investor. Seriously, this is some inspirational stuff if we think of the capital-deprived cultural and creative industries in Nigeria and beyond.
🧶 Cutting out the middlewoman is not always the solution, it seems. This company brings luxury African fashion brands to a (European or American) store near you.
🇻🇳 Censoring art is one thing. Ordering the destruction of 29 paintings is quite another. Vietnamese painter Bui Chat was sanctioned as he did not ask for permission.
❤️🩹 I only heard about trauma-Informed placemaking recently from my Filipino buddy Bri (cheers!). Here’s a great article about places healing from slavery and shootings.
🏝 Small islands with big cultures. Thanks to the Caribbean Development Bank for putting together these creative industries country profiles for us to explore the region.
🧮 A call for greater transparency on returns of development finance institutions. Why? To show that low interest rates work and the private sector needs to follow suit.
🇰🇭 Tough question here for Cambodian music industry players: social conscience and DIY struggle or access to platforms and cash but with links to corrupted power?
💸 Preaching to the converted here but this article tells us to rethink capitalism. They highlight a bunch of interesting design and architecture practices that start doing so.
📖 I know y’all love a free book, so here goes: Rethinking Heritage for Sustainable Development. Sophia Labadi has both negative and positive impacts on her radar.
We got Mondiaculted.
The final declaration of the 2022 UNESCO MONDIACULT Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development is everything … it needed to be. Most surprising to me is the unanimous call to establish a standalone culture goal in the post-2030 agenda, establishing culture as a public good. If implemented by the UN, this would have vast implications for global development agendas, development cooperation strategies, and – most of all – global financing facilities.
Other noteworthy points are the declaration’s calls for more and more diversified arts education, to establish culture in climate change debates, and more scrutiny of artificial intelligence. Predictably, there is also a lot of reinforcement of previous UNESCO declarations. And personally, I am very happy about this side note:
we underline the need to coordinate, strengthen and develop instruments and mechanisms for the integrated analysis, monitoring and measurement of culture and its impact on sustainable development
South African playwright and cultural policy activist Mike van Graan has shared his alternative declaration pointing out some very valid concerns, including the implementation gap, disregard of local coordination and monitoring systems, and the systemic favouring of Global North policy approaches. I very much respect Mike’s outspokenness and hope it will contribute to a critical dialogue.
Confessing our shortcomings in being able clearly to articulate the relevance of culture to political decision-makers on the one hand, and on the other hand, our shortcomings in educating and empowering the arts sector in our respective countries about the relevance of culture as a transversal phenomenon in which they play a role
A few noteworthy things also happened left and right to the conference:
The Culture2030Goal NGO alliance has published a zero draft for a potential culture goal in the post-2030 sustainable development agenda. It’s great to see that there’s finally some beef to it. Yes, the sub-goals are still pretty catch-all and far too wide. And yes, the indicators would struggle hard if they had to respond to these sub-goals. BUT, it’s a great step and I can’t wait for the nitty-gritty discussions to start 🔥
The EU 🇪🇺 pledged 5 million Euros to pay for the ongoing expert facility as well as, more importantly, for the implementation of the UNESCO 2030 Indicators so that this data can work towards culture becoming a more and more integral part of sustainable development. Yeehaa!
IMPACT
🌾 Outcome harvesting crops up time and again in the evaluation toolbox. (too punny!) Big kudos to Nicole McNeilly and Europeana for sharing their semi-successful experience with this methodology. I’ve been eyeing this method for quite a while and found this rather extraordinary story of the Dutch MFA doing a classic 180° on outcome harvesting as their preferred method of evaluation (and how we should really be method-agnostic). To be fair, in our field of arts and culture, outcome harvesting could actually be a pretty viable approach to discern the many and multi-level changes that might have taken place – as long as it’s not used as a lazy excuse for an ex-post scramble because you forgot about evaluation in the first place.
📊 Clear case of why make it easy if you can complicate the hell out of it. Seriously, this DISCE publication introducing their Cultural Development Index (CDI) is just over-complicating a set of reasonable indicators that in conjunction give you an idea of a place’s cultural capability. I guess what the CDI shows is the groundwork for inclusive and sustainable creative economies to flourish. It’s supposed to be a tool for policymaking, similar to the Human Development Index (HDI), and if applied might actually provide some interesting insights. Would I call it cultural development, though? Probably not.
ART IN BETWEEN
🔥 My new favourite online publication TOPIA recently invited Nigerian poet Ojo Taiye to put into words his frustrations with the world.
there is no poetry in drought— here the earth will always be flame.
He serves us three small and just a tiny bit devastating poems for us to reflect on.
apocalypse is too greek a word for the burning river to come.
Also, don’t miss to read the interview with Ojo at the bottom of the page to gain a glimpse into his life and process.
RESEARCH | REPORTS | TOOLKITS
👂 Good cultural diplomacy requires listening. Not just hearing. Considering I just came back from an evaluation mission of a music and culinary diplomacy project in Georgia, the Salzburg Statement on the Future of Cultural Diplomacy resonates quite a lot with me. Lots of important calls to action for all parties involved. Go check it out!
🕶 African youth value arts and culture but don’t consume it. For reasons unclear. Africa’s Soft Power: Can Africa’s creativity transform the continent? sounds like an absolute banger of a publication. Expectations adjusted, the report might not quite answer the question in the subtitle, but what it does offer are insights from a large survey of young people across Africa on how they perceive and engage with cultural and creative industries. Useful, and waiting for more.
🇨🇴 The OECD has done its homework. This super expansive country profile of Colombia’s orange economy has loads of stats, global comparisons, and even identifies difficult areas such as informal employment that require better data collection mechanisms. Colombia is seen as somewhat of a pioneer in promoting CCIs as a development driver. And let me tell you, its policy focus on information, institutions, infrastructure, industry, integration, inclusion, and inspiration is pretty impressive. Something for the geeks.
LIMINAL SPACE
🎙 Radio DJs are the real heroes. In 2016, I met a fascinating guy called Jama Musse Jama at a conference in Cambodia. Hailing from Hargeysa in Somaliland, this Doctor of Ethnomathematics and Director of the Hargeysa Cultural Centre certainly had many stories to tell. What a delight to hear him featured in this excellently produced podcast Secret Somali Tapes, which explores the story of a couple of radio DJs saving Somali music tapes for future generations amid a raging civil war and how Jama continued the preservation of these hidden Somali music tapes after years of civil war that led to a cultural revival and new-found sense of community.
🛶 What is art in Moana Oceania? Another personal favourite: A few years ago when I lived in Aotearoa, I had the honour of meeting Lagi-Maama’s brilliant Toluma‘anave Barbara Makuati-Afitu and Kolokesa U. Māhina-Tuai. In this multi-year project, they have facilitated a range of tok stori gatherings to learn more about the various indigenous worldviews of what art is. If you’ve ever been curious about what art and culture may mean in Nauru, Tonga, the Solomon Islands or Kiribati, please find a quiet place and take some time to explore these incredible rich discussions by people from all around Moana Oceania. It’s just wow.
🌍 What would an African version of the internet look like? This question asks Chukwuemeka Afigbo in his fascinating little thought experiment. I am just mindblown by how easily he lays out – for ignorant minds like myself – how deeply intertwined culture and technology really are. It’s a beautiful read, and I love how he both uses creative writing as a means of delivering his point and shouts out so many great creators, builders and developers that imagine deeply local versions of technology.
OPPORTUNITIES
21 October: Evaluating Socially Engaged Art Practice in South Asia (workshop)
🎨 Mekong Cultural Hub is hosting its Meeting Point, a decentralised conference format across Asia (check it out!). Part of the programme is a workshop by the Indian Khoj International Artists’ Association on their theory of engagement rather than theory of change to measure social or artistic change where change does not occur in the traditionally accepted metrics. Love it!
26 October: The Pluralism Toolbox
🧰 Another super interesting event as part of Mekong Cultural Hub’s Meeting Point is the presentation of the Pluralism Toolbox, developed by Helvetas in collaboration with many partners in Myanmar. I’ve been wanting to write about the toolbox (which is also available in Myanmar, Kachin, Shan, and Karen) and its many culture tools for peacebuilding for a while now. Perfect opportunity to be introduced to the many projects and approaches without having to dig through the 200-odd pages yourself.
31 December: Cultural Sustainability: Can ‘Cultural Impact’ be Measured? (call for papers)
🎓 Taiwan has a special place in my heart. There are amazing things going on that we hear far too rarely about. Taiwan is also the place of my first academic paper presentation some 7 years ago, yay. The Taiwan Association of Cultural Policy Studies (TACPS) was one of the conveners. Now, their new bilingual journal Culture: Policy, Management, and Entrepreneurship has an exciting call for papers out: “Cultural Sustainability: Can ‘Cultural Impact’ be Measured?”. I’m not really cut out for academic papers, but I know I will devour this issue. Get your papers in now!
Please forward this newsletter to a friend, and do reach out: kai@edgeandstory.com
I am very curious about using a theory of engagement rather than theory of change to measure social or artistic change where change does not occur in the traditionally accepted metrics- in the workshop by the Indian Khoj International Artists’ Association in the Mekong Cultural Hub Meeting Point.