Digital China 2010 Berlin Symposium Content
How can Culture be a force for worldwide community and understanding between societies? What role does the Culture Industry play in promoting seemingly disparate cultures? What common elements and experiences from different cultures can serve as a bridge, overturning or outperforming apparent cultural gaps. How can cultural policy-making and the Creative Industries at the levels of government and practitioner be ideally placed to foster inter-cultural communication and counter stereotypes? What role can they play in successful urban or national development and the creation of a healthy environment for their populations?
While the missions of cultural policy-making and the Creative Industries overlap, their methods and aims are very different. They can be used as promotional tools for political or economic agendas, but are ultimately part of a cultural landscape that demands certain ethical standards in its relationship with the audience. Throw into the mix the potential for misunderstanding between the differing cultural environments of China and Germany, and these fields often end up being stigmatised as producers of the very differences they seek to bridge.
This symposium brings together experts from government and the Creative Industries from China and Germany to address the state of current cultural structures and the political relationships for culture between the two regions.
The speakers have been drawn from various levels of social responsibility. These areas first need to be placed in relation to their roles – what their aims are, how these are realised in practice, and how they can work together to produce a strong culture which benefits an economy or how they can be in conflict with each other.
The speakers will provide case studies to illustrate the productive ways their fields have worked together, within and between both cultures. They will also address the relationships between their fields, and look for common ground or points of contention between the two cultures of China and Germany. Within their fields they will look at the structures in place, at the organisation level through to the individual artist or designer, from strategic plans to reality, and how their relationships create the particular cultures that emerge.
The symposium will also touch on the state of creativity today during an economic crisis. How an economic shift creates change in the relationships between organisations and individuals in these fields, and how Culture and the local and international makers of Culture have been affected.
IKM and Shanghai eARTS Festival, as joint sponsors of this event, have come together to provide this platform to foster communication and collaboration on international Cultural strategic planning at an academic level.
Digital China 2010 has been initiated by Shi Li-Sanderson of CPU:PRO.
