A Soul for Europe - 30-03-2007
Forum Belgrade
The Forum Belgrade initiators strongly believe that gathering all available elements of the South Eastern Europe cultural scene, confronting them with the regional and European political and social actors is the first step in building a healthy and responsible society as an integral part of a stable Europe.
Various European policy-makers, cultural operators, business representatives, local and national politicians participated in the first edition of the Forum Belgrade. The participants included several politicians from European Union institutions and from individual European countries, but the tone was set by a diverse company of people who play an intermediary role of some kind between the government and the arts, directors and programmers of cultural and debating centres. They joined in the search for ideas and methods to guarantee the vitality of civic society, particularly in the young democracies of Eastern Europe.
The emphasis was on guests from Bulgaria and Romania, which only entered the European Union recently, and on the politico-cultural class of Serbia that longingly tries to look beyond Serb nationalism and isolationism. What is the relation between national peculiarities and transnational cultural life in Europe, how do independent cultural institutions deal with the ambitions of their governments and their social responsibilities, what can you expect from international cooperation, can we learn from one another’s experiences, is the relation between Eastern and Western Europe necessarily asymmetrical, and if it is, how do you cope with it there? The two days of debates and workshops centred on these and similar questions.
For more information: http://www.forumbelgrade.net/ - http://www.berlinerkonferenz.eu/
Forum Belgrade is an initiative of the Cultural Front Belgrade in co-operation with The Felix Meritis Foundation. It is endorsed by the "A Soul for Europe" initiative and co-produced by the Sava Centre Belgrade and a number of local and international private and public organizations.
