The Arab Group for Cultural Policies held its fifth meeting, organised by Culture Resource, in Beirut on 17 to 21 December 2015. The Arab Cultural Policies Group is made up of representatives from the national cultural policy groups that have been active in 12 Arab countries since 2011 with the support from Culture Resource.
The meeting in the Lebanese capital was devoted to a review of Culture Resource’s cultural policy program for 2015 and the progress made by the national groups and the Ettijahat. Independent Culture organisation that year. There was also a presentation and discussion of an evaluation done on the cultural policy program prepared by Dr. Milena Dragicevic-Sesic after research during numerous visits to many Arab countries and personal interviews conducted in the second half of 2015. The report reviews how the program has evolved since it was first launched and discusses the various operational mechanisms it applies, their degree of flexibility and their ability to accommodate to change. It also offers several recommendations and suggestions as to how to further develop the program so as to better enable it to achieve its aims, while taking into account the diversity between Arab countries and their particular characteristics and needs.
Following the meeting the representatives of the participant national groups received a two-day capacity-building workshop on cultural policy. The workshop was designed and presented by Dr. Milena Dragicevic-Sesic, UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Cultural Management (Belgrade, Serbia), and Dr. Wolfgang Schneider, UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy for the Arts in Development (Hildesheim, Germany).
