The urgency of art in a dangerous world

A media hub called Two Four 54 and other such enterprises have made the country a film-production capital for blockbusters. This is not an accident. It is part of a recognition that cultural vitality is directly linked to economic vitality and intellectua

Arts and culture are the glue that bind together civilisations and yet they don’t figure prominently in big public policy discussions

A rt is not a luxury, not an adornment of civilisation. It is a necessity. It is one of the central purposes of civilisation. Artists lead in ways politicians, chief executives, or generals cannot. They enable us to explore the mysterious — deep within us and all around us. They find the universal within the quotidian and in what has never before been imagined — the links that bind us to one another in the most profound ways.

As a consequence, culture — the product of all of the arts within a society amplified and augmented and internalised by custom and social intercourse — is perhaps the most powerful force on the planet. Because culture, in all its myriad manifestations — from the food we eat to products of our genius to the myths and stories by which we identify who we are — is our system of beliefs come to life.

Throughout history, political leaders have sought to use the power of culture to bind nations or win supporters, to build bridges and heal. Diplomats have found art and culture to be invaluable tools. When the delegates gathered for the Congress of Vienna in the beginning of the 19th century, Beethoven was summoned to compose for them. When the United States sought to win support during its rise as a great power, it regularly dispatched artists — whether composer Aaron Copeland and singer and actress Carmen Miranda to promote its Good Neighbour policy or jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and Herbie Hancock during the Cold War. Russia did the same with the Bolshoi Ballet and perhaps no country is embracing cultural diplomacy more actively as a tool than China is today.

Ask someone in any corner of the world to say the first thing they think of when they think of a country and it is more likely than not to be a manifestation of their culture. Yet, paradoxically, in some countries, like the US at this moment, a debate rages about whether the arts are worthy of government support.

And almost everywhere in the world, arts education programmes for children are under-funded — even though there is massive evidence that in the coming high-tech world of tomorrow the most in-demand capability will creativity. (That is why the advocates of science-technology-engineering-and-math (STEM) education are now so often presenting themselves as champions of STEAM, adding the ‘A’ for Arts because it helps nurture creative capacity.) Further, the arts and cultural communities worldwide are very often seen as being at the margins of global leadership discussions, summits and major conferences. The arts and culture are the glue that bind together civilisations and the drivers of social change and yet, more often than not, they are forced to sit at the children’s table when it comes to big public policy discussions.

That is true in some countries, but not all. Certainly, China is investing heavily in culture and is home today to more major new arts facilities built in the past 15 years than any other country in the world. But smaller countries are seeking to do likewise.

UAE takes the lead

The UAE has turned itself into a magnet for tourism and sent a message that it seeks to be a global thought leadership capital through its investments in culture — ranging from the new Louvre museum which will open in Abu Dhabi later this year to the Guggenheim museum that will soon follow it to the opening of the Dubai Opera House (which sold all its tickets within three hours of them going on sale, even as institutions like New York’s Metropolitan Opera are averaging audiences at only two-thirds of capacity.)

A media hub called Two Four 54 and other such enterprises have made the country a film-production capital for blockbusters from Star Wars to Mission Impossible. This is not an accident. It is part of a recognition that cultural vitality is directly linked to economic vitality and intellectual vibrancy. It sends a message that the country seeks to be seen as a cosmopolitan hub and that it seeks to prepare its residents to operate on the global stage.

Now, carrying this commitment a step further, the UAE through the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, the FP Group, and the arts advisory firm and producer TCP Ventures, is convening the world’s first truly global cultural summit — bringing together over 300 cultural leaders from 80 countries worldwide. The five-day event will feature government ministers, internationally known artists and arts administrators, media and tech leaders, and philanthropists in a programme designed to explore the future of culture and how its power can be harnessed to produce positive social change: from combating violent extremism to reversing climate change, from empowering women to promoting arts education.

The goal is to harness a force-multiplier that cultural initiatives often fail to fully utilise — the power of community. In fact, the motivating force behind the event is that, thanks to technological advances like smartphones and the internet, we will soon reach the first moment in history when every single human on the planet is connected in a single cultural ecosystem for the very first time.

This creates new opportunities for exchange and collaboration and raises new challenges regarding the impact of such connections — from backlash to changing business models and requirements for new thinking about funding or intellectual property protection. We will also honour pioneers of cultural diplomacy in an effort to draw attention to its power and help to professionalise its practice. And there will be art — performance and visual arts from some of the best in the world —that will give the summit the feeling of a festival. Throughout, though the focus will be on identifying actions the group can take together to help harness the power of culture for social good internationally.

It will approach an ancient idea in a new way and with a sense of urgency — one that is driven home by the challenges faced by the region in which we will be holding the meeting, the Middle East. It is just a beginning. Foreign Policy is committed to making this an annual event. But we also hope to produce an impact right now, raising awareness of the opportunity that exists if we recognise that the most potent force for good on the planet is our collective imagination.