The Committee on Culture of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) met in Lille from 26 to 28 June 2013, under the Presidency of Lille-Métropole, the CoPresidencies of Buenos Aires and Montreal, and the Vice-Presidencies of Milan, Angers and Barcelona. A report from the meeting is available online.

The conclusions of the meeting are the following:

• Considering that the Agenda 21 for culture, the founding document of the Committee, is approaching its tenth year of existence, it must be updated. This work will take place during 2014 and will have several dimensions: debates, exchanges and reports. Any city or local government wishing to contribute should contact the coordinator as soon as possible.
• The Committee needs to improve the mechanisms of exchange. There is very valuable information on the local implementation of Agenda 21 for culture and the Policy Statement “Culture: Fourth Pillar of Sustainable Development”, which should be made available and disseminated.
  
• UCLG is a pioneer organisation on promoting the relation between culture and sustainable development. We must continue our advocacy so that the new UN Development Agenda Post-2015 explains this relation and includes, as the Declaration of Hangzhou (May 2013) recommends, “a specific Goal focused on culture, to be based on heritage, diversity, creativity and the transmission of knowledge and including clear targets and indicators that relate culture to all dimensions of sustainable development.”
• The Committee is also engaged in actively contributing to the “Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments for Post-2015 Development Agenda towards Habitat III”, launched by UCLG and which brings together several networks, with an explicit cultural component.
• The Committee will be presented at the UCLG World Congress in Rabat (1-4 October 2013) to further consolidate and disseminate the work in progress. Given that culture is an essential challenge of our society, the UCLG Committee on Culture will continue to strive for this message to be known and operational throughout the world.

To download the report, click here.

http://www.agenda21culture.net/docs_circulars/Meeting10-Report_eng-DEF.pdf