Gael i gyd. Rydyn ni bod yn gweithio cwlwfyd yn credu walder o gael iわr ac yn ddigon, ac rwy'n gweithiooli ar y cyfnod o'r gwasanaeth, ac yn cyfnod.  Gottiwyr yn cyfwyr ferchfyrdwr was a previously disused industrial wasteland, and it now attracts seven million visits a year. Professor Serritt, if you could go up and join us, and hopefully Liz Dillar will be on our screens in a second. We have a plan B and a plan C just in case that doesn't. It's a great honour to speak at this year's Edinburgh International Culture Summit, so ably organised by Jonathan Mills i dwylo'r domiadau a diogelu dyn nhw'n ceisio'n hoffio. Felly, ond wedi gweld gwahol y ffyrdd o'r hefyd yn cyllidol. A oesidio'n wahanol i'r ffyrdd yr Oedden sy'n cofnadiol moedl, sy'n cymleveld Cymru i threduurau a'r drosgwyr i'r llan a'r llaniad. Mae'r ddonw yma, gwyddiad iawn o'r eich cyflos, yr ardydd yn gyfnod o'r cyd-dwylliantau a'r cyd-dwylliantau a'r cyd-dwylliantau, ond y cyd-dwylliantau yn ei ffordd ar gyfer y cyf-dwylliantau, ac yn ymdill yn gyntaf i fynd i'r cyf-dwylliantau a'r cyd-dwylliantau, ac rhai'n gwybod sy'n bryd i chi fyddwch i chi ar arbennig ynddau. Mae'n unig o'i ddweud yn ymgol yma, nid o'r gwybwch cych-dwylliantau, those places where economic growth has become intense. We usually think about such unequality in terms of the obscene amounts of capital controlled by those at the very top 1% or even 0.1%. Meteoric expansion at the top has, in the last 30 years, been paralleled by income stagnation and declining social mobility in our lower middle classes. Mae'r byw ymdweud yw'r byw sylfaen hwn yn ddod. Yn ymdweud yw'r byw ymdweud yw'r byw sylfaen hwn yn ddod, oes eich ffortiwn yn ymdweud yw Gwldfyn Sacks ymferm. Ond ymdweud yw'r byw, dywy'r cyflwyno ar gyfer ymddwych, ac ymdweud yw'r ffordd, mae'r ffordd yn yn ôl yn yr ymdweud yn 30 ymdweud. Y aud yna ble wnaeth yn ymgyrch hynny yng Ngwyloedd Arnill o bydd yn newid yng ngyloedd a'r argym Алеig. Pethau'r awddiadau a byddiol ar y cyflwyniad a sydd wedi'i gwneud o'r byd y bydd ym môn a'r awddiad ydw'r bydd y fwyloedd ar y dliad, draws iawn gyda'r holl. Y cwestiynau ei gastau a gallwn cyllwyniadau i arwain i 30 pressur ac yn 40% ychydig ar y cyflwyniad 25 yma. Rensan's studio spaces tripled or quadrupled in the same period, forcing many artists to abandon the city in order to pursue their work. Now, such findings suggest that there is a kind of zero sum game at work in culture, just as in investment banking. What the elite gains, the mass loses. This zero game has ruled, for instance, the city of Hamburg, which over a decade spent more than 700 million euros to build the Elbphilharmonie concert hall. It's a vast project jutting out into the port of the city. The structure has indeed successfully attracted tourists from around the world and global brand musicians. But there's no money left in the city's budget for support of youth orchestras, for studios in which young artists can work, or for the semi-professional choirs, which once fanned out over the Hanseidic League. How can we get out of such a zero sum game? The argument I want to make to you is that writing the balance means investing more in producers and less on distributors. Moreover, we need to think about how to encourage communities of practitioners, not focus on individual artists. The writer William Emson once declared, the arts result from overcrowding, and that means that a community of people who do different things, speak in different voices, will interact, compete, and conspire, and so energize one another. I'd like to say this was the case in the early days of the tech revolution in Silicon Valley, outside of San Francisco, which I've written about, or in Nehru Place in Delhi. We found in Silicon Valley that you needed to have about 40 start-ups to produce every patent. Which is to say that that is an example of technology in the pre-monopoly days, resulting from lots of people interacting with each other in the arts, in the tech business. We need to think the same way in financing culture. We want to build communities if we want to build creative industries. That's a basic rule of this. God may be able to cherry pick the Google platform, which is going to raise, what is it, $80 billion? What are these? What are they up to? God may be able to understand what that is. For us, the process of experiment, failure, and most of all communication amongst people in a community, a living community of creative types, is what will produce culture. We can't know that in advance by trying to cherry pick the one that looks promising to lift the individual out of the mass. But this alone cannot be the whole answer. When I chaired the Urban Studies Committee at UNESCO, we pondered how investment in our world heritage sites could serve local communities as well as becoming tourist beacons. Our solution was partial in places which required restoration. Local artists got the work and the sites became places for educational programs on history and heritage. But that doesn't grapple with the issue of building new or building big. Instead of the Elbphilharmonie model, how could a concert hall be designed for programs small as well as big? How could it be integrated into the everyday working lives of artists in the city? It's the same problem to be put to big museums. Their public consists of makers as well as visitors. And how can a museum service the needs of creators for community amongst ourselves? More following on the tech line, how can big cultural institutions become something like laboratories in which there are some successes, many failures, in which for every one of those patents required 39 failures or aborted projects? Creative work entails failure and entails frustration. And that's not something that is easily exposed outside of the community. So how should we support this? That is invest in this necessarily dark side of the creative process. And so my argument to you is that we need in some way to orientate ourselves to make institutions large and small, I hate the term creative industries because it's not an industry, but that creative work of all sorts, artistic as well as technical, flourishes because people are interacting face to face with each other. Now these are all questions I've put to my friends Elizabeth Diller and Rick Scaffidio who have been engaged lifelong in designing experimental cultural spaces. If the miracles of technology deliver, I think they, I'm hoping, Liz and I are going to now share some of that discussion with you. And it will continue in a later session on infrastructure planning, which follows this plenary, pushed further by members of Teatr Mundi, Assemble and We Made That. All young institutions run by people who, like Jonathan Mills staff, never seem to sleep in pursuit of new ways to think about and make living cultural spaces. So with that introduction, we'll now show a film, hopefully, about what Liz and Rick did to make such an alive communal space in New York City. So we began to work on the high line in about 2004 following an international competition. And it was the most unlikely project to imagine a park in the air on obsolete urban infrastructure in the Chelsea District of New York. We were part of a group, including these very, very young entrepreneurial thinking citizen activists that wanted to preserve the high line and we came and proved how it could be done. We sold the project by basically telling the government that we imagined 200, 300, 400,000 people a year would visit it. So that was a real understatement now that we looked back last year. There were more than 7.5 million people that were on the high line. So the question is, well, why was it so popular? What happened? And I think that we touched on something that we could not predict before. It was a convergence of the desire of the public insidies to leave work, to be able to have downtime, to leave their devices.  The other thing that we touched on, which was a little bit unexpected, was by using this obsolete piece of infrastructure. We were responding to something much broader. We have limited resources on the earth. We were constantly thinking about adaptive reuse, but we haven't really thought so much about adaptive reuse of urban infrastructure. After the high line, many policy makers all over the globe started to imagine that various pieces of spent infrastructure, whether they be highways, bridges, railroad infrastructure, could also be turned into linear parks. I truly believe that cultural spaces need to be rethought and reinvented. So for a large part of the early career, we were lobbing grenades across the wall as artists or as performance artists, creative people working across disciplines, but always critiquing the institution. At some point, we were asked to actually design the institution, imagine it, invent it. So we ended up having to build those very walls that we wanted to destroy before. Our society is changing so fast. The way we work, the way we play, the way we communicate is so different than it was even 10 years ago, that our institutions really need to keep up with that and to make room for artists to be able to speak in new ways to new publics. It's not an extra. It's a necessity. One needs to think about it as an essential, just like infrastructure, just like cold and hot running water, just like fresh air. One needs to think about the infusion of a culture in our everyday, in our educational system, in our new institutions. That's what makes society keep going. There you are. One thing I think is very striking about the High Line is that you're now actually using it to produce a new kind of opera that you're using it as a space for production, rather than as a space of enjoyment for the public, that the opportunity of making a work of art there is stimulating you and many hundreds of other people to use the space in ways that weren't predicted before. Can you say something about that? Yes. So the entire experience of making the High Line from conception to... it still continues to be constructed from 2014 to now, it has seen huge tremendous growth and transformation. And it made us think very, very hard about the role of the architect in the course of the life decay cycle of a city. So we came to the area of the High Line.  The land was totally devalued. The property owners pushed the mayor to actually demolish the High Line. And so when the High Line was preserved and became so successful, it became maybe a little too successful and produced an enormous amount of gentrification. And a lot of what we loved about it, the grittiness of the High Line had totally transformed into glassy towers. And it made us really think about what's the role of the architect post occupancy? How do we measure success? And one of the things we desperately wanted to do was to talk about this very issue in a creative work using the potential of the one and a half mile park as a stage, as a huge urban stage to sort of tell the story in a new form. And that's what we call the mile long opera and maybe we could just get slide two on there. And so the project is a huge choral work with 1,000 singers made up of almost 40 choirs from all over New York, many avocational churches and schools and community centers from all over New York. David Lang is the composer and Carson is one of the writers and Claudia Rankin. And we decided to sort of do this. We decided to produce it as well as directed as well as really do everything and raise the money as well. And the reason I'm not with you today is because we're in rehearsals for the premiere run which will be in early October on the High Line. So this is the first large scale use of the High Line for a tremendous cultural event that looks at the city almost as it's the backdrop and it's also the real time place that we want people to contemplate. Well, I think that's more, I mean it's an amazing project but I think it's more indicative of a new way that many artists are thinking about the relation to the city which is that it's actually a source of material for making art, that it's a resource rather than a place where already made work is done. And that leads to a different way of thinking about what a production is, what a creation is about. It's in, Tatra Mundi is trying to do this in Paris, it's only three quarters of a mile long but with this used train station to use the sounds and voices of ordinary people in the city. So we're a junior version of you. But this I think more generally is a kind of reorientation of the way about artists feel about the environment which is it's not an environment, it's a place to be in and to use as an artistic resource. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that as our studio has sort of thought about improvement time and time again is that the place for art is not necessarily in the gallery nor for music in the concert hall. It's really everything and everywhere and as creative people are breaking the boundaries between disciplines and rethinking institutions, rethinking their own disciplines, it's very important to basically look at everything as raw material. So for us the very thing that we made now we're looking at it as an artifact. Now it's a piece of the city, it's a piece of its iconocity now and it's transformed everything around it and one has to be working in real time. Sometimes you step in this sort of cycle of change and you've created something that you don't even know, you never expected and now it's something for you to react to. It's a kind of very, very interesting cycle that we never anticipated that we would be part of because normally we make structures, we build buildings, we walk away and they have their own life and one of the curious things about being an architect in one's own city is that now you are the beneficiary of whatever you've done and that sort of makes you think in a very, very different way of what is the future of that and what is its longevity which leads me to also maybe talking a little bit about the shed and maybe we can point to slide 9 because something very, very interesting happened in this part of the city, the very west side and you could see there the green line is the very northern arm of the high line that wraps around Hudson Yards which is an active train yard and sometime ago the city and the state actually decided to develop that property the last huge tract of land to be developed in New York and of course the high line was a catalyst also to the land value there and we had the opportunity to rethink what a new cultural institution might be given the possibility of a very small tract of land and a very new property and so the blue is the shed, it's a new cultural entity that was kind of our brain child and then next to it is that yellow tower is a building that we also made as a residential tower which was for commercial developer so we did three different projects there that just by chance and maybe not by so much chance but we were three very, very different clients the shed is a non-for-profit totally independent sovereign non-for-profit so these three elements somehow now co-exist in some kind of ensemble that just happened Well nothing just happens but do you imagine that in talking about scale the shed is enormous by the way it's a huge structure it's a retractable, I'm not going to explain your project but it's basically a retractable structure that can become quite large I'm interested in how you use that as a space for artists to experiment this very flexible, very large space what kind of programming would suit what you're doing and building that building OK, maybe we can just go to slides 10 through 27 and maybe play them so the idea of the shed really came out of my frustration also in what happened to New York and this is to your point maybe Richard that in the 70s New York was a great place of production artistic production, it was a time when I was in school people like Matta Clarke and Phil Glass and Sol Lawer, Patty Smith there were so many people producing so many different things rent was cheap and the city has changed tremendously since then that was a time of production, today is a time of consumption and most artists have moved out and have been priced out of their loss so we thought wouldn't be great to bring some of that production back to New York and the shed sort of, we seized the moment in an opportunistic way where the city said we don't know what to do with this piece of property does anyone have any ideas, this was in 2008 the economy was tanking and we thought that perhaps there could be something well first of all we said what does art look like in five years, in ten years, in twenty years and basically the response is we don't know we have no idea and the best thing we could do to preserve a place for culture and cultural production is to make an architecture of infrastructure and what I mean by that is a little bit what Cedric Price meant in the fund palace where basically space is preserved there's a lot of structure loading capacity a lot of power and the ability to do pretty much anything you want lots of space you could make small space, large space and if we could make a building that isn't just neutral because we usually think of this kind of flexibility without architectural distinction but what if we could make a building with distinction that also has this capacity for transformation, interpretation and change that could be rescripted every day and on into the future then we would be bringing back something of what was lost so the shed, speed up to today is now going to open in 2019 Alex Puths is the artistic director and CEO from Manchester Festival and he is doing a fantastic job and the shed will only commission new work and co-produce with cultural institutions all over the globe and also inspire and leave space for local artists to do all sorts of things Thank you very much we all look, this is a wonderful project Richard and Liz, can I just say thank you very much that was utterly fascinating Thank you for that presentation, Liz and for joining us from New York I hope we get a chance to see it for ourselves in the next new future I now ask our next guest Sanjoy Roy, who is the managing director of Teamwork Arts in India to present his thoughts in working in areas with limited infrastructure and with a wide range of artists and audiences Thank you very much that presentation was just amazing and I just want to stand up and shout and scream and say every city should take an example of that and go out there and create policies to make it possible Absolutely A presiding officer, Jonathan Mills Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen ministers Artists don't necessarily create work only to entertain They create work because they have a violation to create work They create work because they wish to represent the past, reflect on the future and perhaps also put a mirror to what's happening and make sense of the present For far too long has the art sector continued to be seen as a handout as a charity case What you all forget and maybe remind you again and again as artists and people working in the arts that the arts does produce tangible and intangible wealth in many different ways and across the globe You may choose not to acknowledge it You may choose to continue to cut the budgets of arts organisations and infrastructure projects but you do so at some peril I'm going to give you a few examples of some of the work that we've been partly responsible for but really in a way been facilitators to rather than us ourselves doing it all We work across the globe we work I think in about 40 countries we run 26 art festivals everywhere from Australia through to the United States and bits in between places where there is distress places where there's conflict Israel and Egypt and Zimbabwe and South Africa and Alice Springs in Australia and so on and so forth and in each of these places we have found that every time we are able to bring an intervention of the arts and make an investment it changes the lives of the people it changes the lives of the community and it brings about great economic progress In 2002 the then Western Australia Minister of Interior had invited me to come over Primarily I get invited to many of these things including this because I've got long hair and Jonathan had cut his hair not so much because I know what I'm talking about but 2002 Western Australia the Interior Minister had come to see something that we were doing in India with street children I set up a street children's organisation 30 years ago started with about 25 kids today we have 9,500 children and much of the work that we do there to mainstream them music theatre dance literature film of course everybody then wants to become an artist and I'm going whoa hold on a minute you can do other things as well it's not necessarily only the arts you must be responsible for The Western Australian Government wanted to reimagine open prisons because as you all know in Western Australia 2% of their population is aboriginal, 98% of their prison population is aboriginal this one particular community that we were taken to outside of Calgooli 40 miles outside of Calgooli had 100% incarceration rate that means from cradle to grave everybody had been to prison so all we said is that why don't we work together collectively with these communities in a 100 kilometer radius and allow them to create a project which would define their language, their form, their art and tell their stories it was a big desert project and in doing so the only thing that we asked the government to do is we said don't ask the communities to come into your town to receive their dole but can your dole officer go out to the community in a van to be able to make the payments and can you also send a truck or a van with supplies and provisions for this period of time and can you map it over a six month period needless to say most of you will know in any community that you get dole you get the money at the one end of the street you then go to the alcohol shop and then at the end of the street there's a police man who's finally sort of arresting you and throwing you into jail this is for most disenfranchised and communities where there is inequity what happened was that they realized that the incarceration rate went from 100% to 12.5% in that six month period this is not rocket science and this is something that governments need to understand similarly in South Africa in I think just maybe it was 2005 2006 I can't remember Stephen Sacks who was the head of culture in Newtown in the Hautang district of Johannesburg approached our high commission to ask whether I would come out and give them a little bit of advice in terms of how to resurrect Newtown which had fallen apart all the wealth had disappeared it was crime infested there was only standard bank and F&B when we came in there to assess what the need was we said to the city government we said if you are able to delineate an arts precinct in Newtown and ensure that there is great lighting an excellent policing 24-7 I said I promised that in three years I would walk across Mary Fitzgerald Square with my mobile phone and I wouldn't be mugged it came to pass restaurants opened up art galleries, photography shops the old power centre was transformed into a conference centre the museums came up baseline with Brad did an incredible job pizzerias opened up and today more and more investment has come into that particular area again this is not rocket science this is something that all of you should be doing in communities where you find that there is a problem and you need to find some kind of way to be able to create a new beginning in Egypt just after the Arab Spring we got a call again by our high commission they had been approached by that government of the time and again we went out there and we understood that 80% of their GDP was based on tourism and it had disappeared over that period of time and now people needed to live and they needed jobs and they needed the tourism to come back and again what we did is we said well we need to show the world that Egypt is safe so all we did is we began a festival there but we began it at the airport at terminal one in Cairo and what that did was it beamed out images by BBC and CNN and so on and so forth across the world and allowed people to at least understand that people who were not Egyptian were coming back into the country and it was a safe environment Logan International Airport in Boston roughly at the same time because of the bombings in Boston connected with us to say could we do the same thing in Boston I immediately said I know I said homeland security would never allow it to arrest every artist plus you'll never give us visas so there's no point even considering this particular artistic intervention in America the reason I give you these examples is to show that you don't need a lot of money you don't need a lot of new ideas or thoughts you can look at what is existing as we saw a little while ago and transform your space and transform it for good my own experience in creating this platform was actually thanks to the city of Edinburgh which I visited thanks to the British Council in 1999 as part of one of their missions to take people out to show them Edinburgh and I was so transformed by the collective energies of these thousands of artists from across the globe coming together yes a lot of the work that you see is perhaps rubbish you're not so good but when you see that collective energy and when you see a moment of brilliance as we did yesterday for those of you who came to see home it lifts your heart it lifts your soul and it transforms you and it transformed me and it gave me a sense of we need to create these many platforms we need to believe again in the arts unfortunately the very same city of Edinburgh today because of your policies presiding officer of the present government I suspect you don't allow visas to many communities many people who would like to come here and participate in this incredible offering of culture we need to break down our boundaries on one hand you're talking about the internet having democratised us and having been allowing us all to come together across the world at the same time every country every city state across the world feels threatened threatened by artists feels that we don't speak their language necessarily feels that we wish to jump their visas and stay on in other countries and they deny us that right to speak to be able to express ourselves for all of us together in this very complicated and complex world that we inhabit now one thing that can bring about a difference especially in societies where there is inequity all the way from America through to India and Indonesia and Africa and everywhere else is knowledge and education and the arts provides that it gives you an opportunity it opens your mind it creates a window to be able to see a different history a different culture a different way of being able to work and that's the investment we need to do that's what we have to create I'm going to share three small short stories with you just again to see how investment in the arts in people makes a difference at Salam Balakras the street children project that we began there was a young boy who he wasn't great in his studies so his teacher said to him why don't you find something to do particularly education after your 10th standard and he said oh I want to do photography because one of his peers had become very successful in that Vicky Roy we sort of put him through a photography course he was part of a whole process of training we seconded him to two or three photographers of some eminence and then he went on to find his own voice today Vicky speaks across the world in every TED Talk conference that you have his work sits in most private collections across museums across the world and this was a child who was from the street unlettered similarly in another case at the Jaipur literature festival which is a festival that we started 11 years ago we started it with 250 people who came through our doors in the first year this year 11 years later we had half a million people come through our doors over five days 61% of that half a million are below the age of 25 four years into the setup of the festival because we were very clear that we wanted to aim at young people make it a city festival wanted to reach out to all of those people who didn't have access to this kind of education we had put into place security and because I stand there to receive people for an hour every day when we opened the doors at 7.30 am I was standing there and this man and boy walked off the street and they were stopped because they looked like they didn't belong and because I was there I went up and I said can I help you and the man said you know I sleep on the pavement up the road opposite the SMS hospital and I know I'll never be able to send my son to school nor be able to afford to buy him a book but I thought that if he heard a story it would change his life forever and I'm sorry that I have come I didn't realise that this was not for me and I said not only is it for you I want hundreds and thousands more people like you to come in this is a shared space and you have to understand the sociological context of this that in a city like Jaipur which lives in many centuries at the same time walking through the gate of a palace like that is unthinkable on a regular day and yet he believed he could come that brought about change and this change we know ladies and gentlemen is something that we can feel something that's important something that can break down boundaries and barriers something that can bring us together it is war out there there is hatred the genie of hatred once released you cannot put it back into the bottle how can we bring about change the arts is one possible way of doing that what we need from you is action not lip service what we need from you is investment not charity what we need from you is intent and support intent and support to support artists and allow them their voice irrespective of colour, race country or religion each of you who have come here from your countries be it senior bureaucrats or ministers please we are not your threat we are here to work with you we are here to create more understanding we are here to be to want to be our voices to be heard across communities and across places of inequity and divide please don't look at us as a threat don't shut us down please support these individual voices from Bangladesh all the way to the Philippines and everywhere in between we must stand together we owe it to our next generation our time is long over invest in young people invest in the arts invest in the future of communities thank you thank you very much Sanjoy I can now invite Konstantin Kiriak president of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival in Romania to speak let me sell you my dreams take these dreams for whatever you want to pay me I own money I need money in order to buy the time to get the things that money will not buy I'm so happy to be together with all of you and to discuss together about what means culture and investments if we are thinking that all of us are human beings and we receive the biggest gift our life and we didn't pay something for it it's so important receiving something to give back so being here in Edinburgh one of the best examples in the world what means a community developed in a coherent way where the artists together with producers together with institutions together with politicians having a long vision after the second old war developed something unique in the world to develop the beauty I was born in Romania in a communist country and I got my education at that period since in 89 I haven't any possibilities to live Romania and to travel no passports nothing in 89 nothing unbelievable I don't know if it's revolution but you know the people went in the street and exactly after this shoot of Ceaucescu I started to travel I traveled since now in 152 different countries and when I'm saying 152 here in Edinburgh I have been already 50 times and I was an actor in the period of Ceaucescu in Sibiu middle of Transylvania a city with a community definitely very special Romanian Germans Hungarians Jews and so on and I want to put a point on community what Richard mentioned in the beginning it's so important that all of us are belonging to a community and when we are saying community means human beings in 92 I got the first possibility to be a culture capital of Europe in Antwerpung and at that time started the war in Exugoslavia Sarajevo was surrounded by the Serbs and Ibrahim Spasic the director of Winter Festival called Erig Antonis saying my dear here the hell came all the people are here on the bulls in front of guns and so on help us and all the artists decided to push the parliament of Europe to do association to help them to do something and at that time the parliament of Europe decided Sarajevo to be alternative culture capital of Europe being there as an artist by chance I know to say three weeks poetry it's a way you know to be healthy I put in my mind and I said I'll do for my city this because of that I started with the idea to do something that money could not buy to do something unique for your people in Romania there is a fabulous space Delta Fdanub and we have many many debates why we are not attracting you know tourists why you are not protecting this and so on we have less than half million tourists in this unbelievable space in the world this is the third biggest delta in the world I know what is the way research about all the people living in Delta Fdanub and this is extending for all your communities about the people who are living in the community what are their celebration in the religious dimension what are their celebrations in what means the jobs of them so the like celebration what are the celebration belonging to the nature and if you are doing agenda of this and improving with culture together with the artist you can have what Sibiu has now I started the festival in 93 with only three countries and eight shows this was exactly in the 27th of March when is the International Day of Theatre and definitely was something unbelievable for the city after that you know having so many friends all of them they said hello Constantine you have a fantastic city you might use this historical spaces you have so many churches move the festival and I move it I did it in the end of May beginning of June until in 2007 when I developed the new festival I was growing you know step by step to do also the idea of each festival to bring together the new you know writers in what means dramaturgy and in 97 I decided to do the culture market and in the same time I understood how important is to bring the young generation together with us so I developed also a theatre school and also the culture market in 2000 I took the theatre from the city as the general director and in four years I changed this theatre in national theatre of Sibiu now after 18 years I have in my repertoire 121 different shows we are playing around 400 representation per year with all the tickets sold for all the shows in 2007 I developed the culture capital of Europe Sibiu was something unbelievable I was in front of the jury and the jury said you can't receive this title because look this was in 2004 there are 10 countries coming in Europe now and they don't have permission to have culture capital till in 2009 and I said please show me the decision of the parliament and they did it and there was mention 10 countries in Romania definitely Romania was not prepared for that but I said in the law we have the right because Romania is not mentioned and there was a big scandal they said stop and after the discussion with the assistants of them they said he has the right unfortunately Romania was not mentioned there so they have the right but you might to lead this so I did the foundation democracy through culture foundation that is leading the festival because of the culture capital we developed a culture agenda of the city and now Sibiu has the biggest budget in culture in the world I'm not joking 12% of the entirely budget of the city but what it is really fantastic we are bringing back to the city 16% because of this culture agenda what we develop also it's so important all of you from Europe know that you know creative Europe the meaning for the program now it's building the new audience so we did this for all the actions that we decided to do for all the shows in the festival and this year for the 25th anniversary we got 3300 artists coming from 73 different countries we played in 73 different venues with around 70,000 spectators per day so the idea was to bring the beauty the miracle, the quality near to the public that are not coming for the indoor shows and this was the way to build the new audience I know what I'm saying it's not very nice in western countries and in America all the people are fighting for dancing education music and education theatre and education and so on and unfortunately the spectators are less and less and more older the only problem that we have is to stop the public we don't have enough seats we are working in culture factories and I did things like that and I did one of the biggest shows in Europe and I got the pleasure to work with Jonathan Mills to bring this fabulous show here in Edinburgh we got 75 reviews with 5 stars all the tickets are sold with two months ago so coming back it's so important for all of you to understand how important is to work with the community this year Romania is celebrating 100 years anniversary and I asked the Ministry of Culture of Romania that is here we are doing the celebration of Romania we pay attention for heritage and history and so on but it's important to do the celebration with our partners so his excellency accepted to give a good help and to have this money to do the celebration together with all our partners thank you for what we are doing in your communities and for your artists thank you very much Mr Kerriac and our final presentation in this part of the play is Dr Maria Balshaw CBE director of the Tate Art Museums Dr Maria Balshaw thank you very much and what all of this they said because as last speaker I will inevitably be covering some important shared ground I wanted to start with a story about Tate Tate began its life as a fledgling national museum of British art built on the site of London's most notorious prison in Milbank it was therefore an early bit of cultural development work along with its peer institutions in Exhibition Road and the National Gallery which helped create Trafalgar Square as part of the shaping of a capital city in the UK in our own time Tate's first foray outside London was to hear part of an explicit agenda in Liverpool fostered by politician Michael Heseltine amongst others to jumpstart Liverpool decline after riots in Toxteth this was the first Tate that I got to know I arrived as a student just as Tate opened and my parents took me for my leaving home meal down at the docks newly created as a cultural destination rather than a working docks and I encountered Dali's lobster telephone at Tate Liverpool I was hooked I could say it's why I ended up in the job I'm now in If we fast forward 12 years I had been walking along the south bank for many years a site of desolation until this arrived as part of the conversion of a power station on the Thames in a previously rather deserted part of Southwark which became a gallery of modern international art which everyone said couldn't work so it's signalled by the arrival of spiders inside the building and also outside on the edge of the Thames Louise Bourgeois as many of you will know it was a project rather like the Highline that was predicted to attract 1.25 million people to this newly created gallery space and saw 5.25 million visitors in its first year so more laterally again to become this and in its first year of operation saw 8.4 million visits Tate's expansion changed London fundamentally it made it a global centre for contemporary art in a way that it had never been before and it made contemporary art part of the mainstream life of a world city with the many other businesses cultural and community partners it also regenerated its neighbourhood and still strives to make this a living working neighbourhood and not simply as Richard described about the displacement of existing resident communities and artists to make way for the wealthy and the culturally connected and to do that sensitively is very hard work there's a bit more of a life story here though before I move back to Tate another 16 years after the opening of Tate modern I moved to Manchester to take on the much loved but then rather dusty Whitworth art gallery Manchester was then in the midst of what I would call the second phase of its cultural regeneration having rebuilt cultural infrastructure out of the industrial desolation of the 1970s decline of industry and the devastation of an IRA bomb in the city centre I was appointed to carve out a new future for a wonderful art collection and a slightly decrepit building that had lost its connection to people so this building not a very attractive face to its local park became this expanded and regenerated but what really happened was that the Whitworth reconnected to the park and the culture and the communities and life around it and became a thriving space for art and parks but also for people making things speaking absolutely to that point about spaces for production at the heart of our cultural regeneration in doing so and through giving young people and local communities a space to shape their own ideas and events using those wonderful collections the Whitworth One Museum of the Year for very similar reasons by which I mean enlightened capital expansion combined with long running ground up building of community and culture in the Raymond Williams sense of culture rather than the sense of culture as the high arts I'm proud to say that Tates and Ives another Tate Outpost is currently UK's Museum of the Year these are of course capital projects at the centre of them but I would say following the thread of all my fellow speakers I'd suggest that capital regeneration on its own isn't the whole answer and that sometimes within the cultural sector we've been a bit beguiled with the bricks and the mortar and the concrete I certainly loved working on the Whitworth project with gifted architects Smoomer, two of whom are Scottish and trained up here and working with artists who were very engaged with the project from the earliest stages and God knows as director of Tate I have inherited some extraordinary buildings to work with him but Tate's various expansions were always about working with and building communities as well as creating buildings and in this lies the reason in my view why cities can't afford not to invest in culture in all its diversity of forms so this too was the case in what I called the second phase of Manchester's cultural renaissance still on-going which is all about engaging people and taking some risks together including across arts organisations city councils arts funders and private business interests rather as we heard with the highlight on the back on the back of hosting a commonwealth games and finding that the mass volunteering and the cultural programme had helped to make it an unbelievable success Manchester set up a festival whose unique selling point was to take risks a festival of firsts in a city that was the first industrial modern city Alex Puths now director at the shed set up that festival you'll hear some commonalities between what I talk about in Manchester and what's going on in the shed working alongside Alex at that time in the city revelled in this permission because it gave us the opportunity to not be like London to not compete necessarily with the world cities to take some different kinds of risks and do difficult things that might take people with us and through this and I think through a more sophisticated understanding that has evolved in recent years of the intrinsic benefits of sharing more widely the tools and the opportunities that support creativity and expressiveness the city council has come to a view that it is necessary to invest in culture for all the social as well as the economic reasons it's exemplified for me by an amazing project I was lucky enough to work on caught here in this image developed at the Whitworth with Alex at the festival which persuaded highly skeptical northerners to become part of a live art experiment long before Marina held court at MoMA in New York we agreed Alex and I that we would empty the Whitworth of all its collections so that Marina could place within it 14 live artists and invite audiences to come for four hours at a time put on a lab coat and become part of a live art experiment Alex and I were happy to do it because we thought it was a niche project that would bring us a lot of critical credibility we were surprised when it was an 18 day sell out because people liked the invitation to take a risk together this risk taking approach in Manchester rode on the coat tales of a government led debate about the northern powerhouse George Osborne even had a banner and the debate about investing in the north of England as opposed to in the capital city alone galvanised both cultural thinking and eventually financial investment it irritated some people there was a whole question around why Manchester haven't they got enough already and is it all going to be about buildings again but the cultural dimensions of this northern cultural activity didn't start with a building it started with a vision toward being a more culturally democratic region with people engaged in enjoying creating and appreciating a wider body of cultural practices and it was part of the active construction of civic identity so the argument was made in Manchester but also at Tate Liverpool in Sheffield in Newcastle that there was social, cultural, economic political benefit from this kind of engagement and I think Scotland led the way with a lot of this thinking starting with Glasgow it was exemplified for me when Alex's successor at the festival John McGrath made his first piece of work for his first festival in 2017 with Jeremy Della was titled what is a city but it's people was a 60 metre catwalk show across Piccadilly gardens engaging the range of communities that reflected Manchester in that year so it's creative practice was about participation it was a joyous occasion to be part of not least because completely anonymously my daughter had been selected as the paradigmatic teenager which was a surprise to me so the vision for the festival and now a vision for a building called the factory in honour of Manchester's factory records and that period of creative energy in the city is being created as a new building rather as Liz Diller described a space for artists to make the art of the future in tandem with people and the shed and the factory's thinking has bounced off each other rather beautifully I feel we are all at the beginning of a new chapter the questions that face us now are not so much about how we continue to expand our infrastructure but rather how we connect to an expanded and more diverse audience in our towns and cities as well as with audiences globally we also need to think about how we meet the future needs of artists and protect their creativity within our cities just as Richard was describing and as all of the panellists have talked we need to be defending the value of art in society and I do think it needs defending and we need to defend where it gets made a question we have opened up and explored within the new Tate building itself within Tate exchange and this was part of a project that invited our audiences to debate where culture gets made there is so much that's positive about our current cultural moment even as we wrestle with greater social and political polarisation we've seen the emergence of a politicised popular discourse about what the arts should be last year we saw, I'm just going to fast forward through a few slides swings in the Tate modern co-ordinated by the Danish collective super flex they are as politically engaged as they are fun to work with and the swings that were inside the turbine hall saw people as the generators of the creative energy that is now driving a power station that's for culture and it seems to me in the context of Brexit debates with for us in London the shadow of Grenfell towers reminding us of the consequences of the social and economic polarisation we see in our country in our cities the cultivation of such joy in action as this project was is not silly or playful as some grumpy art critic suggested but it is politically necessary and invites citizens into the making of the culture that they then enjoy to me the reasons for investment in culture are really clear the problems that we all face across the globe you will all recognise it's about intolerance between people inequalities across society the social isolation of individuals worse if you're poor exacerbated if you're elderly I don't think that museums or cultural institutions save lives and I think we should resist but I do think they contribute to the living of a good and engaged life they make us more mentally resilient give us a cheerier outlook on life which is not an insignificant thing and that is part of the intrinsic value of culture for all people who are welcomed into our museums or invited to participate and create the art that surrounds us in thinking in this way cultural institutions aren't just about their infrastructure but they can be partners in the complex shaping of places where a wide diversity of people can live and thrive and work and this gives us the real case for investment in the culture of a city or a country to quote Sir Richard Leith who I worked for for a long time as leader of Manchester city councils he said really who wishes to live in a city without culture thank you very much Dr Balsher thank you very much indeed and we're now going to move on to the first of our ministerial responses and I'll shortly invite our colleagues from Ghana to contribute before I do I was speaking to our Ghanaian representatives last night and I'm conscious that one of the country's leading sons Ghanan the first black African to lead the United Nations died just last week and our Ghanaian representatives have asked me if I would perhaps lead the chamber in just a short moment of silence to pay respect to coffee in Ghana so if you could join me just for a few moments to pay silence and can I now call the Honourable Alex Cofi Agaicom Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Culture from Ghana Mr I think you can speak from your microphone at the desk best to stand but the microphone will come on live there well Thank you very much Presiding Officer I'm very happy to be part of this conference and I stand in on behalf of the Minister for Tourism Arts and Creative Arts I also thank you for the observance of a minute silence for Mr Cofi Annan former UN Secretary General Your Excellency in response to whatever we've had this afternoon I will first of all like us to vet our minds to some critical and specific issues as I listened to previous speakers there's no doubt that all of us are experiencing some recent revolutions and to me these revolutions have a reflection on our culture and the way we connect people in places where there is technological revolution with its impact on automation and cybernation weapon revolution which is also threatening in the form of terrorism and others the human rights revolution as we heard yesterday which is gradually making people conscious of their human rights we are aware of the fact that the world has become global village but what is global village in a form of shortened distances if the complementary factors that will help us to enjoy the global village is not looked at it took me close to seven and a half hours to be here from Ghana that is how short the world has become but apart from the distance that through technological advancements we've been able to achieve what are the other intervening factors and these factors I'm talking about the one that bind us together the brotherhoodness the receptiveness one of the speakers just mentioned that we cannot oscillate between action and inaction one way we are axing togetherness bridging gaps but we advance policies that will help us to achieve that we need to look at it unfortunately we don't want to speak about it but the African still has the burden of freezism and of course my brothers in Europe and the Americas also have the shame of freezism we need to bridge that gap and eradicate it totally if we are supposed to make advancement in whatever we want to achieve what is the way forward the way forward from my country first of all we need to locate where we are to be able to know our destination where are we now as if it were countries I believe that if we all critically look at our short analysis what is supposed to be our strength our weaknesses opportunities and the threats we can't identify this but there are some fact tests that are common to all of us investing in artists is investing in the individual and on Elton his or her talent and to us that is through education and training apprenticeship my brother from India just mentioned the fact that everything that we see in the world begin with the artist but critically let us look at it yesterday I was talking about the Higgs convention 64, 61 years ago we were a lot of our 131 country so far have appended a signature to it 61 years ago where were some of the young artists that we had 61 years ago so it means that even though the artist at the time didn't have any political ambition they were trying to portray the issues at the time now because of changing the revolutions changes of the way we think and perception the current generation may not have or understand the context within those artworks and that's why I'm calling for education and retraining of the younger generation so that whatever is happening in the other non commonwealth countries can't be averted people are pulling down monuments and artifacts because to them they don't extend the positive aspect those monuments were built some of them negatively interpreted and see it as a symbol of oppression a symbol of racism and symbol of subjugation and therefore it's important and critical that if you are supposed to preserve these way especially in non commonwealth countries then all of us here it beholds on us to bring pressure to be upon those countries to ensure that they are there to the convention we in Ghana we have introduced culture into our educational system as was done by our first president and already our investors are offering degree courses in art and culture the government is supporting that with funds institutions and some artists like musicians are being given revolving fund a starter capital as we came along with a young artist who is sitting just at my right hand side here who has already won 20 awards and just last year he won the best songs writer of the year investment in community yes it is essential that we invest in communities but it is also equally important that we allow the communities to own those investment if we isolate them and let them feel that the people who are supposed to benefit from the investment are themselves object of tourism then we're going to have a problem recently in my country there was a particular time a very nice cultural and tourist site whether in proper education or handling they went there and they were just going to look at the taking pictures of the community without even going to shake hands with the people that's their tradition requires the chief of the place ask them not to come there again so I'm saying that yes we invest in community but let the people there enjoy train the local people there to take advantage and then come and manage those investment themselves in that way the people see that whatever investment that they are making they can see it in cash a full에서는 it's an opportunity and those things that we have come to hear and learn it'll help us to be able to go forward we have few challenges but challenges we have all enumerated they're looking to repeat those challenges we believe that together we are all wearing a garment that's of the same destinyOnlyFloat? If you don't mind, Mr Speaker, I'd like to talk seated, because it would be not a speech. It's more some comments that I would like to share with you. So it's an honour to be here. I would like to share with you so it's an honor to be here and I'd like to congratulate the Scottish Parliament for organize this event and it was great to hear from so many different people and experiences. I'd like to talk about the experience that we are having nowadays in Brazil regarding the financing of culture, both in terms of private investment and also public investment as well. Brazil is one of the countries that some people call under developing countries. We have the hard task, the hard challenge in Brazil to feed 200 million people, to have jobs available for 200 million people, to improve the quality of life of 200 million people, to build more tolerant and inclusive social environment for 200 million people. Of course, to stimulate 200 million people to transcend, to live by more than their necessities to fulfill their destinies as human beings. For that, we have a very special and important tool, which is culture. Our cultural values, our cultural assets, our cultural diversity and our cultural expressions. So what we are trying to do right now in Brazil is to really establish cultural as a tool to promote development and to promote inclusion. And I really think that we are achieving a lot in the way that we are facing this challenge and I do think that it's not what we are doing. It's not so different than in many underdeveloped countries as well to use this common expressions. But what is incredible is that most people don't realize that the power of culture to transform lives, the power of culture to promote inclusive development in countries like Brazil. And if people don't realize, less governments realize. So the first challenge that we have in terms of established cultural policies devoted to promote cultural as a development tool is to make people realize its power and how cultural can really increase and boost the development process. It's amazing, I know, or hard to believe, sorry, I know, but only last year we started in Brazil to measure the impact of cultural and cultural investment in the development of our country. And the results are, of course, amazing and people are start realizing its power. For instance, I will share with you a very, very small example. We have in Brazil a literary event called FLIP, the international literary party of Parachi. Parachi is a pretty small city with 36,000 inhabitants, a colonial city which was founded in the 16th century by the Portuguese. And it's a jewel of cultural heritage. And this festival has been done in Parachi for 16 years. And this year we conducted a very profound economic impact study about how this event impacts the city, its economy and the lives of Parachi's citizens. And it was amazing to discover that the event costs less than $1 million. So it's pretty cheap in terms of, it's nothing, it's almost nothing in international patterns. But it generated an impact of $10 million in the city alone, generating 2,000 jobs. So it had an impact actually with a multiplier factor of $10 per $1 invested $10 in terms of economic impact. And it was amazing also to realize that the public investment in this event was something like $700,000. And we had a tax revenue for the city, the state government and the federal government of almost the double of that. So it's typically a triple win situation because you have the social and the cultural impact of such an event in the lives of more than 40,000 people, the people who participate in the event which is more than the population of the city. You have the economic impact in terms of the generation of jobs and wealth and inclusion. And you have also a tax revenue success for the government. So an investment in cultural pays off to the state not only because the social impact, the social good that it makes, but also in terms of how much money the state earned by a tax revenue. So the investment in cultural generates money for other areas, for healthcare, for education and so on. And now we have many, many, many examples like that one of Parachi, of Flippy. And I think it highlights the importance of cultural, especially in a country as Brazil or Ghana or many others in terms of facing in a practical way, so it's not theoretically. We are talking about a practical result of facing the challenges that I mentioned when I start talking to feed 200 million people and so on. Nowadays the creative economy represents 2.64% of the Brazilian GDP. It employs more than 1 million people who have more than 200,000 companies and associations and groups in this sector. And from 2012 to 2016 what we can call our creative economy had an annual average growth rate of 9.1%. Which is more than four times the average growth rate of our economy. So those numbers points out the full potential that we have. So that's because of that that our government is investing this year in many different areas, many different kinds of projects in festivals. In training and education in many other areas, $1 billion in trying to boost the development of our creative economy, seeing cultural as a development promotion asset. And I think other governments and other countries should do the same because it's a way to face the challenge of creating a better society for everyone. I would like to thank you for the kind invitation. I'm the first time in Edinburgh and I'm so proud of it. I'm so pleased to be here and to share some thoughts, some ideas with my colleagues and it won't be a speech. It's more about commenting maybe or talking about what means for us culture and investment. I think it's something here. Do you hear me now? Good. Well, as we know probably in Lithuania the new government started to work in 2016 December. This government is a very special one because it's the first time in modern history that we have a professional government so called the 14 ministries and 11 of 14 are not any part connected. They are professionals from different sectors and we are going through really big changes within the financial sector, healthcare, social care, education and science and then of course cultural policy. Everything is connected to the people of course. We are here in this government to redesign the whole cultural policy because it's time to rethink and to adopt more to the processes going on in the global world. And also nevertheless in Europe. After 28 years of restored the independence of Lithuania so lots of structures became old fashioned, too much bureaucratic and not so very efficient and therefore we have plans to change many sectors in many layers. And what we did already or were going to do, this is not only changing the financial funding system for culture and arts but also initiating various instruments and programs focused on developing new generation of culture users. Pretty much focusing on cultural education. Also access to culture and involvement into creative process is one of the top priorities as well as cultural heritage preservation. Well we have plans to change totally the whole system and we are working on it. The model should be finished in the end of the year. So while working with the cultural policy so we are co-working with other sectors especially when it comes to regions. Regions are for us a horizontal priority and so to say together with the ministries like internal affairs, social affairs, healthcare or education and science and transportation communication. So we are creating a regional map where we can identify various active centres and of course we look through all infrastructure as well and well powers of creativity and implementing from our own perspective, from our own sector implementing various instruments and programs to develop strong communities because strong culture can be one we develop strong community. One we encourage people to stay in the places where they live to be proud of the identity of their local culture and to be more well with higher self esteem and to be more confident and well motivated to create processes in their local culture. And what we do I can mention we do a lot of things and together with the Ministry of Education and Science of course 70% of our actions confirmed by the government in the governmental action plan should be implemented together with the Ministry of Education and Science. This is the first time in our history that happens that we are collaborating really closely with each other. And two maybe instruments that I would like to mention connected to the young generation and also to the access to the culture in the regions. The model for the implementation of sustainable cultural development in the regions that we do now decentralising so called cultural council which is a cultural policy implementation organisation. We are creating 10 regional councils connected to the territorial counties that will autonomically work on the strategies for various regions, cultural strategies for three years ahead and defining what is most important for this particular region. Also creating expert boards from the local experts, only the financial control will be concentrated in the main central office so to say council of culture. We are giving all possibilities to decide what is important for this particular region or for this particular municipality. Of course in double allocation of funds for the culture and arts since this September, October we are starting to implement this pilot project and then from the first of January with some corrections we start this implementation all over the country. This also activates the local governments to be more active in funding culture because there is a requirement at least 30% to allocate money for the selected projects for the regions. The more municipality invest the more money comes from the state so that's the algorithm that we use and it will be more encouraging for the local governments to be part of the funding of their local projects. Of course it involves more people into the culture, into the creative processes and so on. The second initiative that I would like to mention refers to the young children and young people for all ages in Lithuania schools. So called the cultural passport. The cultural passport is a very innovative initiative that applies to the school kids. Well that will have a range of services, cultural services and cultural products for free. That means that we are investing money, allocating special money for the school kids to have every school year starts. They have a menu containing various cultural services like performances, concerts, educational programs in various museums and of course free access to all museums in Lithuania. And they can select by themselves what they want to see or experience both separately alone or with the class or with the smaller groups and we are encouraging local governments to take care of the transportation. If the kids, let's say in a small village would like to see good theatre performance in the capital city so the local government has to take care of the transportation. And this program will be applied already from the 1st of September this year as a pilot project for the kids from level 1 to 4 because this program will be created for special age groups like three groups. And we start with the age group 1 to 4 and then from the next year from 1st of January we apply to all schools in Lithuania, all age groups. And we see it as a really huge investment in developing a new generation, creative thinking, well conscious, responsible and well very actively involved in the culture processes. And I think this is also about developing new audiences because I think when the culture becomes an essential part of your everyday life then you don't have to work or to invest much in the new audience building. It will come naturally because it will be natural need for everyone to use culture every day. So we have plenty of initiatives both within the formal and informal education but we think that is so important to invest in people, first of all in people. And that's why we care about new coming generations and we care about people in the rural areas or let's say in the regions that as in all other countries the process is happening. Now people are leaving regions and going to the major cities and we want to keep them more in these local places and to make these communities stronger. So the cultural identity is about to have small strong identities all over the country. I can share with you lots of initiatives that we are doing at the moment so it's really a lot of things starting from cleaning up the ministry referring to the colleague who says stop being bureaucrats, let's co-work together. And I would say that's what we did exactly as a head of the ministry when I came to the ministry I said let's work together with the artists, with the cultural people. And we changed the whole structure at the ministry, flattened in the private companies instead of three directors or heads over so we have only one. And we removed all departments and from 18 units we made up to 11 and they are co-working together like project-wise. And more result-orientated so we started to clean our home to get out outdoor so to say to the cultural fields and to make drastic changes. We want to make changes in the mindset and that's why we're doing in many layers and many aspects. So if you would like to hear more about our initiatives so we have plenty of time I mean we can meet one by one and I would be really really glad to share with you. But by finishing I would like to say let's think about the people, let's invest in people, this is about the culture. Thank you. Thank you minister. Thank you minister. A message we've heard from I think all our speakers this afternoon. I think all our contributors for their fantastic presentations and I thank you all. I'm going to hand over if I can again to Joanne Kendall to tell you where to go next for the next workshops. Thank you very much.


So, what ended up happening was that I chose a life that was very different from the status quo from the previous generation's designs or roadmap for success. And the main points that I want to make in this speech today is loosely about lifestyle design, looking at how to, which is what is being called like the modern phrase which used to be just called doing things you like doing, having some fun, having a fun life and now is lifestyle design in a package so we can sell it. But what I want to talk about is the way that you can make choices in your life and this speech is for young guys out there because I get a lot of guys contacting me asking me what should they do with their lives and I don't necessarily want to be responsible for men quitting university or real jobs and going out to India. I'm not necessarily saying that's the best thing to do but I do want people to start thinking in terms of what are their real options and that it's not necessarily the riskiest thing to go out and live a life that is on your own terms. Our parents generation, our grandparents generation came from very different economic socio-political times and back in my parents generation it made sense more or less that if you were working class, middle class, unless you were born into extreme wealth it was a good idea to study hard, get involved in a job that seemed stable and stay there for multiple decades, buy a house early in the city that you were brought up in and get married and have kids. That was the way things were done and it did equate that if you studied hard, worked hard, were pragmatic that likely you were going to succeed. Things these days are very very different. There are still some industries where that is like the correct thing I guess or makes sense to do and I work with a lot of these guys as a dating coach, a lot of analytical thinkers, a lot of engineers, IT guys, finance guys, those areas that yeah there's still plenty of work out there for but in terms of life satisfaction maybe that those things are deficient. However, in my opinion as someone who accidentally became a digital nomad, accidentally became a successful entrepreneur because I was never planning to do those things. I was planning to follow passions that I were interested in which originally was martial arts so that meant that I had to go to China because that's where the masters were that I wanted to learn from. So instead of doing what a lot of my contemporary male friends did, buying cars, sometimes buying houses, getting themselves, saddling themselves with lots of debt in order to try and project a certain status to the world around them, I put my limited resources into travel and finding masters and teachers that I wanted to learn from. So it was that I went to the ends of the earth to find the teachers that were really meant something to me. My other passion in life was playing the flute which I play very nicely and so I started a weird wacky funk band which was never gonna work in terms of becoming famous because I was several decades too late for that.  However that was what I wanted to do, that was an expression of my passion and moving from these kind of odd choices to odd choice, what I did was I recognized that there was certain time and places to experiment with this kind of stuff and that there was also a time to let it go and move on because I did notice playing music for many years that girls would have sex with a guy who might become famous but they don't have sex with a guy who's definitely not gonna become famous. Yeah there's nothing sadder than seeing that 39 year old guy rocking out in the local pub still just living the dream, still just holding on to that that it's someday it's gonna work. I spent 10 years playing in a weird wacky funk band and I was obsessed with that, that was my life's purpose and at a certain point I realized okay if I keep doing this this is gonna get sad it's been really fun and interesting up until this point but I need to shift and change. I developed over time the abilities that eventually led me into becoming a really effective entrepreneur which the first one was


Obviously we're in a situation right now globally where harm reduction is a contentious thing. We have lots of environments where just the term harm reduction is a problematic term. We have other environments where harm reduction is very much a fledgling thing. It's a new process, it's a new ideology in some kind of context, so although of course some harm reduction discourse positions itself as being very pragmatic, a lot of harm reduction discourse is very much aligned with narratives of human rights and respect for human rights and specifically the right to the highest attainable standard of health. So in terms of what we're going to be hearing about today, we're going to be hearing about some harm reduction interventions and harm reduction processes that are very new. And what's happened in terms of those new processes and very new ideas, although maybe the harm reduction process is a few and far between, these new initiatives are very compelling and very important for us to learn from. We're also going to be hearing about some contexts where there's big opposition to harm reduction and there's big opposition to interventions, initiatives, service and healthcare provision that's pragmatic, that focuses on human rights and services that respect the human rights of our communities and communities of people who use drugs. So in these contexts we're going to hear about opposition to harm reduction and reducing harm reduction interventions. We're also going to be hearing a little bit about contexts where narratives of human rights and narratives of service and healthcare provision for marginalized, criminalized and socially excluded communities where those narratives are somewhat incompatible with historical narratives in these contexts. And so we're going to be hearing about the difficulties in terms of aligning human rights narratives and aligning narratives of the right to the highest attainable standard of health for marginalized communities, the difficulties of aligning those discourses and narratives with historically entrenched ideas. And we're also going to be hearing about service and healthcare provision in areas and contexts historically and contemporarily considered to be somewhat conservative and how even in this sort of context of conservatism and increasing moves towards populism and this sort of thing that harm reduction and a focus on service and healthcare provision and human rights pragmatism can actually to some extent prevail. So I'm sure you all join me in welcoming our speakers and enjoy the session. Good evening, everyone, everyone and everyone. I am very happy to be among you tonight. I'm going to share with you an experience of a foot by my other foot, which is a political one, a socio-cultural context, which doesn't really allow us to evolve in the context of policies that cover human rights and that protect vulnerable populations. In Morocco, a few years ago, we were no longer talking about the reduction of risks, but about other policies that take into account the populations of the users. And there was the total absence of policies and strategies related to drug use, the total absence of specific services to people who had problems with the use, the only available load was within the psychiatric hospital, in very vulnerable and inhuman conditions. There was also the lack of information regarding the situation of the users and the consumer profile. The only available data was a single survey in 2003 that aimed to measure the passage of drug consumption in the occasional phase, depending on the Moroccan general population. There was also the lack of information related to epidemics, especially about the use of drugs. Only in 2004, we started talking about an initiative for specific interventions for drug users. In 2004, there was the creation of a psychological medical center that is always administrative related to the psychiatric hospital, but which developed a different approach to the use of drugs that respects the most or less the international standards of the reduction of risks. This experience of the Psychological Medical Center allowed us to create an association in 2006 with the aim of supporting the work that is done within the Psychological Medical Center and allowing the access of maximum drug users to its services. It was the Hasnuna Association that held on to drug users and was created in 2006. It was considered the first initiative of the Moroccan civil society. It was a desire to go beyond mental health concerns and allow a fund for public health and human rights. Since December 2007, the Hasnuna Association was able to mobilize the Ministry of Health in the first place and other partners to develop the first program of exchange of drugs in Tangier. It allowed us to have a structure of the intervention of the reduction of risks through a mobile unit, a charging station and a reception center within Hasnuna. This pilot experience showed the feasibility and acceptability of a reduction of risks in the Moroccan context. This experience led the decision-makers at the national level and the main partners to adopt the reduction of risks and to define, since 2007, a national intervention framework was established in 2007-2008 with a national action plan for the reduction of risks in 2008-2011. Of course, it began the opening of three centers of substitution treatment at the Metadone in Tangier, Salé and Casablanca. The Hasnuna experience and the evaluation that was conducted in 2012 by the Ministry of Health and the positive results that showed the utility of the intervention of proximities within the population of drugs. This experience encouraged the decision-makers at the national level and the technical and financial partners in Morocco to expand the device in other regions, especially in the north of Morocco, as a priority site, because the rate of consumption of heroin is mainly concentrated in the north of Morocco. In Tangier, Nador, Chosima and Tito. At the initiative of the Hasnuna team, there was the creation of a national reduction of risks that currently works on the eight sections at the national level. Hasnuna, from 2012, changed its name. At the beginning, it was Hasnuna de Seutien, a psychological medical center. Currently, it is the Hasnuna association supporting drug users. The NGOs managed to convince the Ministry of Health and other partners to ensure financing for the implementation of programs of risk reduction at the level of Morocco. Today, the strategic and operational framework for the reduction of risks is organized around this main intervention. It is the need for users to use the materials of consumption that are smoked, sniffed and injected, but unfortunately only the materials of smoke and injection that are available in Morocco. The prescription for the replacement treatment in the Middle East, the only replacement treatment available currently in Morocco. The access and treatment of people is positive, treatment and hepatitis treatment. There is also the change of norms and culture within the community of drug users by the creation of support groups. There is also all that is socio-psychological and professional insertion program spread at the national level. There is also the change of social representation linked to drug use and the defense of the rights of users especially women who are double stigmatized as women or as drug users through drug use at the national level. The offer of the reduction of risks in Morocco is summarized in the seven components and offered in three to four. There are programs for the reduction of the risks managed by the associations and there are centers of addictology managed by the Ministry of Health and of course the role and structure of HIV prevention, managed by the associations and by the Ministry of Health. This experience of 10 years needed in the context of the implementation of the RDR programs more human resources in terms of structures managed by the associations and by the Ministry of Health to be able to provide services in the context of the national strategic plan which can push the Ministry of Health with partners to create a center of resources and training at the level of the Tanger whose role is to put at the level and in quantity and quality the interventions and services dedicated to drug users the harmonization of principles and the modalities of interventions of the RDR programs the distribution of the approach of the reduction of risks in the region and also the mobilization of local actors and decision makers for the creation of a favorable environment for the interventions of the RDR and the promotion of rights through drug users. Currently in Morocco we have more than 2,500 people who benefit from the substitution treatment of methadone in the context of 5 methadone programs we will see 10 million people benefit from programs of exchange of syringes of psychosocial support this center of mobile support and units we will see 5 million people benefit from programs of professional insertion the most important on the access of users to their rights at the level of the Tanger to contribute to the improvement of the conditions of drug users Currently the arrest results of consumption are no longer at the level of the Tanger and the people incarcerated have access to methadone even within the presence Beyond Morocco Today, Morocco is a country particularly advanced in the framework of programs of risk reduction at the regional level of the MENA region at the African continent The Tanger training center is also designed as a regional platform to strengthen the RDR capacities in order to pay our colleagues at the Tunisia the Senegal, the Libya come to Morocco to ensure a theoretical training and a practical internship on the field Despite these results despite the effort that has been carried out by NGOs and militants of the civil society the program of risk reduction in Morocco is therefore required of several difficulties and challenges There is really the insufficiency of human resources in the media body under the responsibility of the Ministry of Health There is the list of waiting of methadone who surpasses 1,000 people in the three cities at the northern level Tanger, Titouan and Nador It is a program that has just been launched There is a financial challenge of intervention of risk reduction in the long-term There is a rate of mortality related to overdose especially in Morocco where there is the consumption of opiacs The naloxone in Morocco is not available The rate of hepatitis is very high near the population of drug usage It surpasses 82% in Nador 64% in Tanger There is a lack of treatment and access to hepatitis treatment There is also the evolution of the legal framework on drug consumption in Morocco Thank you for your attention I hope that I have managed to give you an image of the program of risk reduction in Morocco