Can Culture Bring People Together?

Image by infomatique via Flickr

Before I came to the Forum, I was concerned with the “obession” as I saw of NGO’s in the area of intercultural dilaogue on Art and Culture.

I come Ireland where Art and Culture are not something that everyday people relate to in ordinary language. So it was hard to reconcile in my head how bring people together for music or art will make people have a dialogue.

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The Closing Ceremony

This morning we will hear from Andre Azoulay, President of the Anna Lindh Foundation, who will chair the session.

We will hear from the rapporteurs of the various sessions
Ljubov Lisssina (Trajectorya, Estonia) Education, Intercultural Learning and Youth
Serene Huleileh (The Arab Education Forum, Jordon) Cultural and Artistic Collaborations
Garba Diallo (Crossing Borders, Denmark) Creating Spaces of Peace and Coexistence
Mario Alves (ACE ETNIA, Protugal) Cities, Migrants and Diversity
Norbert Hintersteiner (Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin) Religion, Spirituality and Values
Katarina Stigwall (Head of Network Sweden) Medina
Yousri Darwish (Head of Network Palestine) Medina
Carmen Sammut (Euromed Taskforce, Malta)

There will then be an overview by Michele Capasso (Head of Network, Italy) and Andre Claret (Executive Director, Anna Lindh Foundation)

We will then hear from the Euro-Med Award 2010 winners, Combatants for Peace and History in Action.

Following that there will be intstitutional interventions from Antonio Fogué Moya (President of the Diputcaió e Barcelona, Spain), Abdulhadi Majali (President of the EMPA, Jordan) and Abdelmaksoud Rachdi  (Chair of the Euromed Non-Governmental Platform, Morrocco)

Then Andre Azoulay, President will close the forum.

The live blog is here

Here I start

Here I start. I welcome myself to this new space. Social Media. I have heard about this and read several posts though never thought about being here, sharing and writing. These days I am participating in Anna Lindh Forum 2010 where I got the chance to have a live real blogging experience. I still have difficulty to process all what I learnt these days but I can start with saying that i got to meet amazing people. Young people active in their societies, working non stop for a better life and a better future for our generation and the coming generations. It is amazing to have all this positive energy running all over the space.

This event has been great on several levels, got to meet with friends coming from Palestine, got to meet with Palestinian who broke the siege on Gaza and managed to join us, got to meet with amazing young people and made new friends, got to listen to different speakers who are actually decision makers in youth policy.

We still have a long day.. but as I said before, I just wanted to welcome myself with all of you :))

Saif PYN

A Dialogue-breaker

Everyone talks about dialogue here, but what is the meaning of dialogue? Is dialogue even happening when the parties come with their fixed agenda and just wanna be heard?

I must confess I’m not much of an activist or a political person so I only had 3 genuine conversations with Palestinians in my life (2 of them in ALF) but all 3 left me with little hope of peaceful coexistence in the horizon. Last night at dinner it finally caught up with me: A dialogue cannot happen when there is no real listening. Obviously we grew up on very different narratives we both perceive as the complete truth, and probably both of them aren’t the whole truth. But as long as every Palestinian I meet thinks his narrative is the only truth, how can there be dialogue?

Lets Blog for Intercultural Dialogue

How to become a BLOGGER ?

The room was full of people , interested to know about blogging , The Anna Lindh bloggers network, blogging and inter-cultural dialogue , and who’s better than our trainer Xavier to lead this workshop.

The Anna Lindh foundation has organized a training the last July on Blogging for Inter-cultural dialogue, the training took place in an amazing place in Luxembourg , and our workshop was about the training mainly , but Xavier as he always surprise us and the audience he thought involving the audience in the workshop will create a space of interaction , some people start to leave the room, basically because the don’t want to be involve in the working groups , but we had lots of interested people who stayed to participate in the working group

Plenary 2: Contribution to a Euro-Mediterranean Intercultural Startegy: The Role of Anna Lindh Foundation

Chair: Assia Bensallah (Groupe De Sages, Morocco)
Moderator: Thierry Fabre (Musuem of Europe and the Mediterranean)

Institutions:

• Denis Huber (North South Centre, CoE, Portugal),
• Jean Louis Ville, (European Commission)
• Nancy Bakir (League of Arab States, Egypt)
• Ali Moussa Iye (UNESCO)

Anna Lindh Networks:

• Abdelfattah Abusrour (Palestine)
• Claue Frisoni (Luxembourg)
• Anat Lapidot (Israel)
• Nilgun Mirze (Turkey)
• Ibrahim Spahic (Bosnia-Herzegovina)

The Live blog is here participate on twitter with the #forum2010 hashtag.

Also check out the webcast

Migrants and Cities

Image by Dr John2005 via Flickr

So this morning I attended one of the Sessions on Migrants and Cities. This was supposed to evolve around places that connections and dialogue could occur, both online and offline.

Now I am not claiming to be an expert on this stuff in anyway, but I was sort of disappointed in the session. There was lots of talk of Art, Culture and Academia, all of which will make a difference, but not one that will make a difference between migrant and host country citizen.