International cultural policy database planned by IFACCA

[caption id="attachment_7284" align="alignright" width="251" caption="IFACCA"][/caption]

In the first week of December 2010, IFACCA announced at the 4th IGC of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, its preliminary plans to work with a range of partners to develop an international database of cultural policies.

This year IFACCA has been in discussion with the founders of the highly regarded Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe (www.culturalpolicies.net), the Council of Europe (CoE) and the ERICarts Institute, to develop an international version of the Compendium as a tool for policymakers, researchers, advocates, civil society and the global community.

The international database would be a central, web-based and regularly updated database of country-specific profiles of cultural policies that would also provide the capacity to monitor and analyse global trends in key aspects of cultural policies. Underpinning the project will be partnerships with a range of regional intergovernmental bodies.

As a pilot for the database, IFACCA sought the support of the Australia Council to commission a cultural policy profile for Australia. This profile is currently in draft form and will be used to help develop and test the international database. In addition to this, in October this year, the Boekmanstichting launched "Cultural Policies in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia". These profiles are currently available in hard copy, and will later be included in the international database.

An international steering group comprising representatives from a range of interested partners are helping to guide the project and it it anticipated that a preliminary version of the project will be able to be launched at the World Summit [www.artsummit.org] in Melbourne in October 2011.