Presentation of Rainbow Paper at Culture Action Europe's Annual Conference 'Scene ouverte'



“To what extent does an intercultural artistic consumption experience really increase somebody’s capacity for Intercultural Dialogue?”

In Marseille, more than 250 participants from across Europe and the Mediterranean region joined in the debate on the place of culture in Europe’s external relations, and the role of civil society in European cultural policy-making. Those two days proved once again how European cultural challenges resonate in the daily reality of the arts, and that many new spaces of debate and action need to be opened. A prominent point on the conference agenda was dedicated to the Platform for Intercultural Europe’s presentation of the Rainbow Paper ‘Intercultural Dialogue: From practice to policy and back’: Twenty days after the official launch of the Rainbow Paper endorsement, 99 organisations and 63 individuals had already signed up to the paper via a website facilitated by labforculture: http://rainbowpaper.labforculture.org/.

Platform coordinator Sabine Frank focused her presentation on the role of the arts in Intercultural Dialogue and provocatively said that Intercultural Dialogue was too often limited to the artistic celebration of diversity. She explained why the Rainbow Paper integrates the arts into the chapter on educating for Intercultural Dialogue: Here the arts are grasped in their capacity to promote an engagement between people with different cultural background in a participative process.
“Active involvement in artistic and cultural activities allows for an easier understanding of other perspectives, the existence of other memories and histories, the capacity to take risks, the ability to be confident in your peers, the skills to be creative, the knowledge to analyse reality critically. The participation of citizens in cultural activities helps to prevent discrimination (…)” (Rainbow Paper: From Practice to Policy and back, 11)
The presenter invited the attending arts representatives to contribute to this discourse by signing up to the Rainbow Paper and joining the Platform for Intercultural Europe.

What is the Rainbow Paper and why you should join the signatories.
See the current list of endorsements.