The World Summit is taking shape, and is just around the corner! The speakers programme and cultural programme reveal an outline of the event's five-day activities, which promise to be a celebration and exchange of ideas, creativity and diversity.
One of the main challenges that comes with the production of a Word Summit is setting up a meeting point for different perspectives on artistic and cultural practices. The objective is to generate exchanges between different voices and discuss a variety of issues, such as the role of the Government in culture, academic reflection and analysis, and a wide range of specific case studies that reflect such ideas and policies into action. Thus, the diversity of points of views, locations, contexts, cultures, genders, and sexual diversity, nourish our event with rich content in order to create a truly international dialogue.
For Magdalena Moreno, the Summit's Programming Director, diversity is the ideal platform for great ideas to flow:
"Diversity is essential in international dialogue. The more diverse a group is, the better prepared it is to face new challenges. In the case of art and culture, the principle of diversity generates a truly creative drive."
Thus, our three new speakers represent diversity not only because of their nationalities, but also through their various areas of work and points of view they bring to this Summit.
Faith Liddell is an experienced director, programmer and producer who has worked in key strategic and creative roles across art forms, with a focus on the creation and development of festival programs. In January 2007 she took up the role of Director of Festivals Edinburgh, a new organization created by Edinburgh’s 12 major festivals, to lead their joint strategic development and to sustain Edinburgh’s pre-eminence as the world’s leading festival destination. Faith will speak of how these types of events can transform the shape and life of a city, and, in the case of Edinburgh, help it become one of the planet's greatest laboratories in new ways of experimental thinking and creating.
Jack Stanley is Director of Programs for Fogo Island Arts, a not-for-profit cultural institution in Newfoundland, Canada. In partnership with the Shorefast Foundation, Fogo Island Arts is bringing international attention to the region by supporting projects by artists and scholars working at the intersections of art, heritage and community enterprise. Jack’s work focuses on the role that aesthetic education plays in rural resilience, something which he shall speak of during the Summit.
Cresantia Frances Koya Vaka’uta is Acting Director at the Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific (2009 – 2010) and a lecturer in Education at the same University. Her doctoral thesis explored Pacific understandings of ESD through an examination of Samoan and Tongan ancestral art. This poet and artist will speak about the possible role that arts can fulfill in formal and non-formal education, especially as a practice for resistance and sustainability during critical times.