Cultural diplomacy - Demos

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Maximising the UK’s cultural competitive advantage research projects running each year, resulting in 500 peer-reviewed papers, about 80 per cent of which involve an overseas element. The V&A or Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, could not fulfil their cultural and scientific functions without borrowing from, and lending to, overseas collections, and organising scholarly exchanges and visits. The BL cannot continue to fulfil its duties without continuing to acquire significant material – both by value and content – from overseas: in April 2006, it took the decision to give greater priority to the acquisition of Chinese material. 43 This inherent internationalism is not confined to the UK; in New York, one of the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA’s) curatorial directors told us: ‘the Museum is international’. As a result, some cultural institutions are beginning to internationalise their governance structures to reflect their remit, character and operations. For example, more than half of the BM’s trustees were born outside the UK. The networks that have been developed by our cultural institutions are not restricted to other cultural institutions, but extend to government, scholarly peers and local communities. When Kew undertakes a plant collecting exercise or the BM undertakes an archaeological dig, their contacts will include everyone from the relevant authorising authorities in national and regional government to local manual workers and guides. Just as our opinions of other countries are shaped by personal experience, how our cultural organisations go about their business thus assumes significance in the way that the UK is perceived abroad by everyone from foreign ministers to workers. The effect of such contact can be even more powerful when it has an educational purpose. When the ROH carries out workshops in schools abroad, for example – as it has in China and South Africa – it can bring a whole new approach based on developing the creative potential of the individual. In countries where individual rights are neglected or even suppressed, this can provide a vital space for development. The nature of their work also requires cultural institutions to be collaborative, not just because this is in the public interest, but because it makes their own work more effective and creative, too. For Demos 41
Cultural Diplomacy instance, when the V&A redesigned its Islamic galleries, the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington asked to borrow some of the collections that were going to go into storage. The V&A obliged primarily as a matter of public service, but also in the knowledge that there would likely be opportunities in the future for the NGA to return the favour. There are a number of projects that involve multiple partners from different countries. The BL’s International Dunhuang Project is a ground-breaking international collaboration to reunify cultural objects that are scattered around the world. This necessarily involves shared standards of curating, cataloguing, scholarship, technical issues and so on, but it will also result in making information and images of more than 100,000 manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Silk Road sites freely available on the internet. Similarly, the NHM-led SYNTHESYS project involves 11 large collection institutions in creating a shared European infrastructure for research in natural science. The project is developing shared resources, common standards and funding access for scientists from 34 countries. Kew is at the heart of the African Plants Initiative enabling more than 50 institutions in Africa, Europe and the US to capture and share data for research and educational purposes. As these examples show, cooperation is inherent to the way the institutions operate. Much of the NHM’s international work is collaborative and specimens collected will be shared between the NHM, collaborators or museums in the country of origin, and sometimes museums in third countries. This agreed practice supports a distributed international system of collections, information and expertise that subsequently involves extensive sharing of collections and mobility of researchers. Furthermore, this openness is not reserved for other cultural professionals. Anyone from anywhere can walk into the NHM and have a specimen they have found identified. The museum gets tens of thousands of enquiries a year, and, while being generous with their expertise benefits the NHM itself and benefits science, it is also a notably open and democratic approach which is not written down or imposed on them. As one scientist from 42 Demos
Page 1 and 2: Culture is a central component of i
Page 3 and 4: First published in 2007 © Demos So
Page 5 and 6: Open access. Some rights reserved.
Page 8 and 9: Acknowledgements We would like init
Page 10 and 11: Glossary ACE Arts Council England A
Page 12 and 13: Executive summary From the reciproc
Page 14 and 15: Executive summary positions. Highli
Page 16 and 17: Introduction In the long course of
Page 18 and 19: Introduction exchange is now very f
Page 20 and 21: Introduction as well as the battle
Page 22 and 23: 1. Culture is an essential componen
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Page 34 and 35: Maximising the UK’s cultural comp
Page 54 and 55: Building relations through culture
Page 66 and 67: 4. Next generation cultural diploma
Page 68 and 69: Next generation cultural diplomacy
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Page 86 and 87: Conclusions and recommendations �
Page 88 and 89: Appendix: Snapshots of cultural dip
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Appendix: Snapshots of cultural dip
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Appendix: Snapshots of cultural dip
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Notes 1 According to J Nye, see www
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Notes 39 DCMS, International Strate
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Bibliography British Library, Briti
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Bibliography M Leonard, Britain TM
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Organisations interviewed China Ai
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Organisations interviewed Cymroza A
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Organisations interviewed The Briti
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Copyright 110 Demos DEMOS - Licence
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