Culture 21

The Agenda 21 for culture is the reference document of the local governments to draw up their cultural policies. It’s based on the principles of cultural diversity, human rights, intercultural dialogue, participatory democracy, sustainability and peace.

The role of culture in local policies

The Agenda 21 for culture a tool to promote the role of culture in local policies. The present canonical triangle of sustainable development (environment, social inclusion and economics) either it doesn’t include culture or it is considered an instrumental element. Therefore, the Agenda 21 for culture is a tool to turn culture into the forth pillar of sustainable development. This confirms the importance of having solid and autonomous cultural policies as well as the establishment of bridges to other dominions of the governance.

The base of the Agenda 21 for culture

In September 2002, during the first World Public Meeting on Culture, held in Porto Alegre, it came up the idea to draw up a document guidelines for local cultural policies, a document comparable to what the Agenda 21 meant in 1992 for the environment.

After nearly two years of work (of discussion of previous drafts in conferences organized by the international cultural networks that encouraged its creation), the final document was approved in May 8, 2004 in Barcelona, and in September 15 it was submitted to the UN-HABITAT and UNESCO. From October of this same year, the world organization United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) (the UN of the cities) assumed the coordination of the Agenda 21 for culture. UCLG is the world’s biggest association of local governments, founded on May 2004 to defend democracy and local autonomy and to give voice to the cities in international forums. In the UCLG, the Agenda 21 for culture is managed by the Committee on culture, which is chaired by the Barcelona city council, and Stockholm, Lille and Buenos Aires councils are its vice presidents.

In 2009, the Spanish Agency of International Development Cooperation AECID and the Barcelona City Council created a Fund for the implementation of the Agenda 21 for culture in African, Mediterranean and Latin American cities.

The contents

The Agenda 21 for culture starts from the idea that culture makes a great contribution to human development, because it promotes values like creativity, diversity, memory or rituality, all of them increasingly necessary for any human being to widen his or her freedoms (Amartya Sen). The Agenda 21 for culture has 67 articles, focused on five main subjects:

1. Culture and human rights
2. Culture and governance
3. Culture, sustainability and territory
4. Culture and social inclusion
5. Culture and economy

The articles are divided into three large sections:

• principles
• undertakings
• recommendations

The document is available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Galician, German, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian (Serbo-Croatian), Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. All translations, articles and information about seminars and publications can be found in pdf format on the Agenda 21 for culture website.

Around 350 cities, local governments and organizations from all over the world are linked to Agenda 21 for culture..

External links

• UCLG. Local Policies for Cultural Diversity
• UCLG. Culture, Local Governments and Millennium Development Goals
• Blouët, Christelle. Agenda 21 for Culture in France. State of Affairs and Outlook
• UCLG. Culture and Sustainable Development: Examples of Institutional Innovation and Proposal of a New Cultural Policy Profile
• UCLG. Cities, Cultures and Developments. A Report that Marks the Fifth Anniversay of the Agenda 21 for Culture
• Pascual, Jordi. Cultural Policies, Human Development and Institutional Innovation: or Why We Need an Agenda 21 for culture
• Montréal, cultural metropolis
• Lille City Council
• Buenos Aires City Council