m-cult, centre for new media culture in association with Arts Council of Finland and IFACCA hosted an expert meeting on 22-23 August to share information on policies to support media arts and new media culture. Participants came from Canada, India, the Netherlands, England, Thailand and Australia.

The mini-summit's aims were to:

• assess implementation of new media policy, both models of best practice and failures
• understand the implications of media arts-specific policy in relation to a model where "new media" is supported across the spectrum of all art forms
• discuss new media culture policy, where media arts is a focus area
• discuss the increasing focus on combined research and production and the challenge the approach poses for traditional divisions in funding
• discover ways through which international collaborations (productions, networks, non-local organizations) could be better funded: the networked new media culture
• develop concrete collaborations, possible funding schemes, statistics accumulation, research and development projects amongst the participants

The meeting generated an interesting debate and resulted in the drafting of the 'Helsinki agenda'. IFACCA released its response to the Agenda in October 2005 (click here). The Arts Council of Finland also published a special edition of its quarterly magazine, ARSIS, as part of the mini-summit. The meeting was held in affiliation with ISEA2004, the 12th International Symposium on Electronic Art 12-22 August 2004.