We are a month on from the MONDIACULT 2025 conference, and just days away from when a new UNESCO leadership takes up its roles and defines its approach to promoting the place of culture in both current and future development frameworks.
As such, it is a good time to reflect on where we are and where we can go next in the drive to ensure that culture is fully integrated into policy-making, both as a goal in itself and as an enabler of other goals.
We do so with a new set of tools. In addition to all of the rich discussions that took place in Barcelona, we now have the MONDIACULT 2025 Declaration and the Missing Goal report prepared by UNESCO ahead of the conference.
Both of these underline the urgency and feasibility of culture as a development goal. They also highlight different sets of issues that could be incorporated into the future Goal we want to be at the table in the initial conversations that will happen from July 2027.
At the same time, there is certainly room to build on these documents in order to arrive at a text that could be included in a future development agenda. In particular, a broader focus on cultural rights, a greater mobilisation of institutions, and a stronger emphasis on the need to integrate culture into policy making across the board are necessary.
As a contribution to this work, MONDIACULT 2025 was also the occasion to launch the Culture2030Goal campaign’s revised Culture Goal proposal. Based on extensive consultation and research, this not only updates our proposed targets, but also proposes indicators. These acknowledge the risk of quantitative indicators over-simplifying or distorting action, showing that there is a way of approaching culture in a similar way to other Sustainable Development Goals. In short, culture is ‘goalable’.
As underlined in the introduction, a key question now is to take forward work in this space. The Campaign is certainly ready to offer all support it can, drawing on its global networks bringing together state institutions, local and regional governments, civil society organisations and individual creators and heritage professionals.
Crucially, we need to broaden our focus. We cannot only engage in discussions and actions within the cultural space, but must bring these to the United Nations and other policy fora. We need to see the messages of MONDIACULT 2025 also reflected in other outputs from intergovernmental processes beyond the culture field, not least the World Social Summit, the WSIS+20 High-Level Meeting, and the UN General Assembly Resolution on Culture and Sustainable Development.
We also believe that there is also considerable potential for governments to adopt a culture goal voluntarily, and to report against this in Voluntary National Reviews. Our own proposal has been developed with this application in mind.
At global, national and local levels, the argument is clear and convincing – recognising the role of cultural rights and mobilising the cultural sector and better incorporating cultural knowledge and insights is a recipe for greater policy effectiveness across the board.
We will be active in calling for this, at all levels and in all spaces, and look forward to working with all like-minded countries and partners in doing so, and so ensure the long-term impact of MONDIACULT 2025.
Stephen Wyber, Director, External Affairs, IFLA, on behalf of the members of the Culture2030Goal
Campaign