Promoting Culture in the Peripheries: Med Culture publishes guidelines
June 16, 2016
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The EU-funded Med Culture programme developed a series of ‘Guidelines for Promoting Culture in the Peripheries’, based on findings and recommendations of participants in the regional consultative thematic Peer-to-Peer workshop “Broadening the Base – Work in the Peripheries”, held in September 2015 in Tunis.
These Guidelines aim to inspire and mobilise decision-makers in government institutions across South Mediterranean countries towards a better understanding of the value of promoting culture in local development planning, particularly in regions/cities remote from capitals and other large/prominent cities. They also aim to draw the attention of decision-makers as well as cultural operators to the value of promoting local assets, mobilising local resources, and new models of cooperation – new frameworks for public-civil society partnerships, and local-regional partnerships, etc.
They are the result of discussions on the promotion of culture in the peripheries (in regions/cities remote from capitals and other large/prominent cities) in national/local development planning, the role of cities within this planning and their relations with central governments, access to funding and modalities of this funding, as well as implementing mechanisms, and involvement of local communities, etc.
Med Culture is an EU-funded regional programme with the aim of sustaining the creation of institutional and social environments propitious to culture as a vector for freedom of expression and sustainable development. This should be accomplished by reinforcing the capacities of the public and private cultural sectors as vectors for democratisation, and economic and social development for societies in the Southern Mediterranean.
Med Culture is part of the regional programme “Media and culture for development in the Southern Mediterranean” which has been allocated a total budget of €17 million over a four-year period, of which €9 million is for the award of grants on a co-financing basis, and €8 million for one capacity-development mechanism on media (Med Media) and one capacity development mechanism on culture (Med Culture). (EU Neighbourhood Info)