A Final Blog Post from Simon Brault, Director and CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts

Earlier this month, we brought together more than 400 delegates from over 86 countries in Stockholm, Sweden to address the theme Safeguarding Artistic Freedom at the 9th World Summit on Arts and Culture.

In this report, the Special Rapporteur underlines the rights of migrants to have access to and effectively participate in all aspects of cultural lives, both of the host State and their own cultures. The Special Rapporteur recalls that international human rights law provisions protect those rights, regardless of the legal status of migrants and notes the need to ensure substantial equality in protecting cultural rights. The Special Rapporteur reflects on overcoming the obstacles that migrant artists face and highlights the need for intercultural exchange and interaction to ensure dynamic, diverse and democratic societies.

Asta Pakarklytė, Chairwoman of the Lithuanian Council for Culture, and Rūta Stepanovaitė, Director of Administration, participated in the 9th World Summit on Arts and Culture in Stockholm. The meeting was organized by the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies in conjunction with the Swedish Arts Council. The main theme of this year's conference is creative freedom, and the goal is to unlock the power of culture through collaboration and dialogue in an international context.

An Indonesian non-profit organization that focuses on arts advocacy, Koalisi Seni, on Wednesday, launched an artistic freedom monitoring system at Taman Ismail Marzuki or TIM, Central Jakarta. The system that can be accessed on kebebasanberkesenian.id was Koalisi Seni's consistent contribution to supporting the rights in creating and enjoying arts in the country.

On Tuesday, 9 May, members of the trade union confederation Glosa-Zasuk and the SVIZ trade union, together with representatives from the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs, held a third meeting at the Ministry of Culture, where the social partners agreed on the need to extend the existing collective agreement for cultural activities.