A global platform to reflect and discuss the state of arts and culture in a changing world

The Event

The Fórum Cultural Mundial São Paulo [World Cutural Forum São Paulo] will offer a global platform to reflect and discuss the state of arts and culture in a changing world, aiming to offer new forms of international cooperation.

What is the role of arts in society, the artist's importance in today's world, how much money is left for culture, what are the needs and endowments for the upbringing of culture? Does globalization lead to a crisis of the arts or is such a crisis just a result of worldwide economic recession? Does globalization destroy cultural diversity or conversely make diversity stronger thanks to exposure? These are just some of the issues, which will be discussed at the Fórum Cultural Mundial São Paulo.

Arts and culture play a key role in economic development, creating new educational parameters, alleviating conflicts, and promoting a more peaceful coexistence between different people and cultures. They stimulate innovation, creativity and diversity; generate new ideas, technologies and solutions for all kind of human needs.

By putting arts and culture at the core of the discussions and agendas, the Fórum Cultural Mundial São Paulo intends to establish a global platform in order to strengthen ethical values, promote prosperity, sustainable development, human rights and a peaceful global coexistence. The Forum will promote the extension of the role of culture and arts in national and international policies, the increase of investments in the cultural sector, mobilizing support for the development of cultural activities. In times when support for culture and arts is cut down and minimized almost all over the world, the Fórum Cultural Mundial São Paulo will act as a global platform to defend culture and arts and promote new ideas and ways of creating, producing and distributing them.

The Fórum Cultural Mundial Brazil 2004 will have three major elements:
- A global convention in the form of an 5-days symposium about the most important issues, questions, themes, goals and objectives of culture and arts today;
- A festival with an international artistic program;
- A cultural market of ideas and opportunities.

The Fórum Cultural Mundial São Paulo will have special geopolitical and cultural focus on:
- The Southern Hemisphere in general
- Brazil and Latin-America
- Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Regions
- Mediterranean Region and the Middle-East
- Cultural and Ethnic Diasporas

An International Conference of Ministers for Culture from all over the world will be part of the Fórum Cultural Mundial São Paulo.

Concept

The World Cultural Forum is an initiative which aim is to promote culture as a fundamental dimension of contemporary life, involving a stock of human abilities of diverse aspects - to be, feel, do, think, invent - focusing, especially, on the relation maintained with the development of societies.


Dislocating arts and culture from the suburbs to the centre of debates - thinking development as a cultural dimension, and culture as a factor for development - the Forum establishes a world platform aimed at strengthening the values of ethics, prosperity, sustainability, and global coexistence. It acknowledges the major role played by the production of knowledge, and the importance of stimulating innovation, arts, sciences, and technologies, involved in finding solutions for the needs of mankind.

The Forum stresses the fundamental role played by arts and cultural shows in the development of the economy, and the creation of new educational parameters; it also stresses how it is important to cultivate diversity - as sources of self-gratitude and self-esteem for the different communities, the ways of life, fundamental rights, systems of values, traditions, and beliefs. It also seeks to expand the role of culture in the policies of Brazil and those practised in the rest of the world, increase investments in the cultural sector by mobilizing the support for the development of cultural enterprises.

The World Cultural Forum is a global process, which is being built collectively by actors of various regions linked to one another through a network, and involving over 70 preliminary events on various continents. In Brazil, where it is already fully set up, the forum will include regional projects in various parts of the country, a Brazilian Forum in Rio de Janeiro; all this is to focus on one direction towards a referential landmark, that is, the major meeting which will take place in the city of São Paulo, during the period going from June 26, to July 04, 2004.


Programme

Global Convention - Conferences

At the center of the Fórum Cultural Mundial São Paulo is the global convention, an international symposium which will offer a place to reflect on the world's cultural perspectives and social realities from June 29th to July 3rd. The convention will be an open platform to discuss and exchange ideas, experiences and knowledge, stimulated through panels, discourses, workshops and other forms of intellectual, political and artistic demonstrations, debates and provocations. The global convention will gather leading professionals from the arts, culture, education, media, science, technology, philanthropy, social-economic development and from politics.

The Symposium will be made up of 6 general and interdisciplinary themes.
The themes have been developed by thematic groupwork, coordinated and reformulated in close cooperation with the various Brazilian and international institutions, universities and experts. The focused topics will be presented and discussed in several national seminars, thematic forums and international conferences.

As general themes of the Global Convention at the Fórum Cultural Mundial São Paulo are proposed:

- Culture and Social Development: Dividing Responsibilities
- Identity and Autonomy: Designing new Maps
- Knowledge, Education and Solidarity: Cultural Dimensions of a new Time
- Cultural Diversity and Bio-Diversity: Patrimonies and Paradigms of Humanity
- Culture and Economy: Production and Circulation of Values
- New Concepts of the World: Articulation and Administration of Culture

The opening debate will focus on The Role of Arts and Culture in Society.

The theme of the last day of the Symposium will include the General Conclusions of the Convention and a debate about the Future of the World Culture Forum.


Ideas and Opportunities' Fair

The Ideas and Opportunities' Fair is not just a Cultural Fair, it is an open space for dialogues, contacts and communication, a market for ideas and opportunities as well as for the distribution of artistic products. The Ideas and Opportunities' Fair also offers opportunities for business and negotiations between artists and professionals from the cultural field. It is an open exhibit and shop-window for interested public, showcasing and presenting cultural and artistic products and institutions from all over the world, as well as a meeting-point with installations, performances, concerts, debates.

As the central meeting-point of the Fórum Cultural Mundial São Paulo the Ideas and Opportunities' Fair will also offer such services as internet-access, technical assistance, info-center, translators/interpreters, a café, a bar and a gastronomical center.

Information about Reservation of Stands for the Ideas and Opportunities' Fair: feira@forumculturalmundial.org


Artistic Programme

The Fórum Cultural Mundial Brazil 2004 will include a large artistic programme: dance- and theatre-performances, concerts, installations, exhibitions, movie-programs, digital-arts etc., ranging from contemporary to traditional arts-forms, from stage-performances to out-door-events in the streets and squares of São Paulo.

As the Forum will take place in Brasil, naturally a certain priority will be given to the Brazilian arts and cultures. Brasil offers a vast array of arts-forms and cultural expressions as vast and diverse as its cultural heritage. The Fórum Cultural Mundial São Paulo will give it's guests and visitors an idea of what cultural diversity means in Brazil. The program will stage Brazil's latest and finest productions in contemporary dance and theatre-performances, concerts, exhibitions and movies.

The international program will present artistic projects from all over the world, related to the themes of the Fórum.

A special space has been designed for focus-programs exhibiting artistic productions from the Southern Hemisphere, especially from Latin-America and the Caribbean region, Africa, the Middle-East and the Mediterranean region.

Keywords like authenticity, diaspora, exchange, inclusion, diversity, arts and development will lead through the artistic selection.

Cultural pilot projects from all over the world will be presented, connecting the artistic programme with the symposium's themes and the market of ideas and opportunities.

Who are we

CHAIRMAN
Gilberto Gil - Minister for Culture of Brazil
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Danilo Santos de Miranda - (Chairman of the Board of Directors) - Regional Director of SESC São Paulo;
Ruy Cezar da Silva - Director of the Cultural Institute Casa Via Magia Salvador;
Cláudia Costin - Secretary for Culture of the State of São Paulo;
Celso Frateschi - Secretary for Culture of the City of São Paulo;
Paulo Miguez - Secretary for Formulations and Assessment of the Ministery for Culture Cultural Policies;
Octavio Arbelaez - Chairman of the La Red América Latina de Promotores Culturales Independientes [Cultural Independant Promoters Network of Latin America];
Walter Roberto Malta - Chairman of Rede Brasil de Promotores Culturais Independentes [Brazilian Network of Independant Cultural Promoters];
Rebecca Raposo - Executive Director of GIFE - Institutes, Foundations and Companies' Group;
Regina Célia Reyes Novaes - Professor of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, member of the Management Committee IBASE - Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econômicas [Brazilian Institute of Socio-economic Analyses];
Iara Pietricovsky - Chairman of INESC - Instituto de Estudos SócioEconômicos [Institute of Socio-economic Studies];
Franz Patay - World Culture Alliance
ASSOCIATES
Guilherme Reis - Representative of the Forum in Brasília - Rede Brasil;
Maria Helena Alvarez - Representative of the Forum in Rio de Janeiro - Rede Brasil.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Dieter Jaenicke