5th St Petersburg International Cultural Forum concludes

The fifth St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum was held in Russia on 1-3 December. Representatives from more than 80 countries and regions participated in the forum, which organized 275 events. Dozens of projects were presented and numerous important agreements in the sphere of tourism, museum industry and other spheres of culture were signed at the Cultural Forum.

Take a look at the programme.

The goals of Forum are formulated in three main directions:

Culture as a heritage of mankind. Forum’s goal is to initiate, develop and implement national, inter-State and global programmes aimed at maintaining and augmenting of the preservation of cultural heritage;

Culture as a factors for social growth. Forum’s goal is to ensure effective functioning and creating the new mechanisms of influence of the culture on the development of modern society, both globally and locally.

Culture as an industry (economy of culture). Forum’s goal is to contribute to the achievement intra-industry goals of development, providing culture’s existence as self sufficient social environment.

As reported in Xinhua, the Forum highlighted a series of fruits yielded in the China-Russia cooperation in culture. The Chinese delegation was the largest foreign delegation at the Forum.

In a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the opening ceremony of the forum on Friday, Chinese writer Wang Meng said that the China-Russia cooperation in culture is vital for the long-term mutual trust, understanding and dialogue established by both countries on the basis of equality.

Speaking at the forum, Wang called for preserving and developing cultural traditions so as to build a beautiful cultural landscape featuring globalization, modernization, pluralism and integration of ethnic and regional characteristics.

Eight Chinese universities and 18 Russian universities signed an agreement on establishing the China-Russia Association of Culture and Arts Universities.