Cultural diplomacy - Demos

Cultural Diplomacy
of ‘soft power’, 1 but security expert Walter Laqueur, sees it differently:
‘Cultural diplomacy, in the widest sense, has increased in importance,
whereas traditional diplomacy and military power . ..are oflimited
use.’ 2
The term ‘cultural diplomacy’ is not easily defined. When thinking
about culture, we have taken as our starting point the United Nations’
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which Article 27(1)
states that: ‘Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural
life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to share in scientific
advancement and its benefits.’ In this report, we take a broad view of
what the term culture includes, and discuss science, sport and
popular culture as well as the performing and visual arts and heritage.
In our research, we have been working primarily with partners
among the ‘memory institutions’ (the British Library, British
Museum, Natural History Museum and Victoria & Albert
Museum), the scientific/cultural institutions (Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew, and Natural History Museum), in the performing arts
with the Royal Opera House, and with the cultural agency the British
Council (BC), which undertakes cultural relations activities on behalf
of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
In addition to extensive research in the UK, we have carried out
fieldwork in China, Ethiopia, France, India, Norway and the United
States of America and undertaken detailed desk research on Iran. The
differences in national approaches are summarised in the appendix.
Our aim has been to understand how different nations approach and
carry out their cultural diplomacy in order to make recommendations
about how the UK should develop its strategy, policy and
practices in this area.
One significant finding is that it is becoming more important for
us to pay attention to cultural diplomacy. We are moving from a
world where the term was primarily concerned with relations
between elites – where static and traditional cultural settings
provided the opportunity and backdrop for relaxed ambassadorial
and political contact, for example – to one where culture is also a
medium between people on a mass scale. Many-to-many cultural
16 Demos