“A Soul for Europe” – European Culture and Economy Platform:
Venice meeting: “Culture Economy and Social Responsibility”
3rd of June 2011
Thetis, Arsenale, in Venice, Italy.
The European Culture and Economy Platform (ECEP) is a European-wide civil society platform of individuals from the culture and economic sectors and invited politicians which functions as a think-tank to develop common strategies, actions and policy proposals and concrete recommendations to ensure the sustainable development of Europe, its regions, its cities and communities in a global contest. It is a long term project of the “A Soul for Europe” initiative and its partners in the culture and economic sectors. The need to build such a platform was formulated during the “A Soul for Europe” Berlin Conference in 2008, on the basis of which “A Soul for Europe” planned to create this platform in four stages by a series of meetings in Istanbul, Berlin, Venice and Brussels.
The first action was taken with „A Soul for Europe“ Istanbul Forum: „Global Challenges, Cultural Visions“ in October 2010. This joint endeavour co-organized in partnership with the European Cultural Association in Istanbul, Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture, TUSIAD -Turkish Industrialists‘ and Businessmen’s Association, BDI Kulturkreis der Deutschen Wirtschaft brought together highly-ranking personalities from the fields of business, politics and non governmental organisations as well as a large group of engaged young Europeans from many different countries. One of the main result of the Istanbul Forum is that a concensus among all participants has been reached on the necessity to arrive to a common vision among all actors in society to coherently address global challenges. (more info at: www.europist.net/asfe).
A comprehensive book has been published on the Forum outcomes with the aim to constitute the basis for the further steps of creating the platform. You can read the pdf version of the book at the e-zine Citizensofculture.net)
The second step has been the Berlin Conference: Towards a Citizens’ Europe, which took place in November 2010. In this occasion Dr. Arendt Oetker, the Vice President of BDI expressed the need for a continuous and structured dialogue in order to find a common language between business and culture actors.
It is, therefore, crucial that the business sector, the non governmental organisations as well as the individual citizens take active responsibility, together with the political decision makers, in the process of the European development facing global challenges such as the economical and financial crisis, socio-cultural tensions, worldwide threat of climate change more.
The Venice meeting on the 3rd of June 2011 will be the third and next step to strengthen the dialogue among the actors, and proceed with a further step towards the implementation of the European Culture and Economy Platform. The choice of this date and place is not a co-incidence. It is one day before the opening to the public of the 54th Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennial, which is the first and the best known cultural event in the world having a substantial economic dimension in many respects. It is a symbol of the interaction between culture and economy since a century and it gathers several personalities form the culture and business sectors at the same time, in the same place. Therefore, the Venice meeting aims at bringing new actors and new points of view into the platform project and fostering its visibility. The meeting’s discussions will focus on „Culture, Economy and Social Responsibility“ with the goal of identifying new ways of relationship and concrete collaboration between actors from the field of culture and business.
To download the European Culture and Economy Platform concept paper please click.
