Tag Archives: Cultural Diversity

Highlighting the Role of Libraries in Protection and Promotion of Diverse Cultural Expressions

2021 is the International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development, and IFLA has been helping libraries identify where they fit in – and how they can advocate for their role.

The UNESCO 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions is an international framework in which Member States commit to promoting conditions that will allow creativity and the creative economy to thrive. You can learn more about this Convention with IFLA’s Get Into the 2005 Convention Guide.

We have examined some of the broader ways in which libraries open the door to cultural participation in a recent article. Key values upheld by libraries which allow cultural participation and protection include providing access to information, education, and lifelong learning opportunities, promoting digital, media and information literacy skills, and carrying out cultural heritage preservation.

Through our advocacy, which highlights how libraries connect their communities to all forms of cultural creation and participation, we can help build awareness of the important role of libraries in society. To do this effectively, there are four useful steps you can take:

  1. Set an advocacy goal
  2. Identify your audience
  3. Clarify your advocacy message and ask
  4. Provide examples that support your advocacy message

This article will walk you through these steps and suggest actions that you can take to advocate for the role of libraries role in cultural participation. You will be strongest working with your association if this exists, but of course contributions from individual libraries will add to this.

Step 1: Defining your Goal: Including Libraries in National Reporting

From the beginning, it is important to have an objective for your advocacy in mind. In this case, you will want to ensure that libraries and examples of relevant library programmes are included in your country’s next Period Report to the 2005 Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

This document is a result of the fact that State Parties to the 2005 Convention are required to submit a report every four years. These reports detail the policies and measures they have put in place, as well as any challenges they have encountered.

These reports are an important way for civil society and other stakeholders to engage with government officials and demonstrate progress being made towards implementing the Convention. Find out more.

Periodic Reports in 2021 and 2022

The following countries will be preparing Period Reports in the next two years. Note that the 2021 deadline for State Parties to submit their report to UNESCO is 30 June.

2021: Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Comoros, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guyana, Iraq, Morocco, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Serbia, Turkey, Venezuela

2022: Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Czechia (Czech Republic), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Lesotho, Malawi, Republic of Korea, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine

Step 2: Identify your Target Audience: National Points of Contact

A next step in effective advocacy is to identity your audience – in particular who will take the critical decisions, and who might influence them.

In order to achieve the goal of including libraries in your country’s next periodic report, your main audience would be your country’s National Point of Contact for the 2005 Convention.

National Points of Contact

State Parties to the 2005 Convention have each designated a point of contact responsible for information-sharing with relevant Ministries and public agencies. These contact points gather information from both governmental and non-governmental sources and assist in the drafting of the quadrennial periodic reports.

Find your National Contact Point here.

You may also want to understand who can help you in convincing the national point of contact. These may be decision- and policymakers at the local or national level, institutions, civil society organisations, inter-governmental organisations, or other stakeholders. For example, are there specific libraries which could help, cultural associations which make strong use of libraries, or key journalists or thinkers?

 

Step 3: Clarify your Message and Ask: the Recognition of Libraries

With a clear goal and understanding of your target, you can then work out how to clearly state why your audience should consider libraries as important to their work (that is your message). This will be at the heart of your advocacy, in meetings, preparing blogs or articles, on social media and beyond.

You should also define clearly what you would like them to do, in order to make things simple for the decision-maker(s) (that is your ask).

You will want to define and draft these in a way (and a language) that is appropriate for your setting, but you can use the below as a starting point.

Message:

Libraries and their staff have a key role in preserving and providing the widest possible access to culture. They can foster an environment where diverse cultural expressions are encouraged, valued, shared, and protected – an environment in which a strong creative economy can thrive. Core values that the Convention upholds are also values that libraries champion and enable. These include freedom of information and expression, participatory democratic societies, linguistic diversity, the fundamental role of education, and recognition of the importance of the digital environment in education, creating and providing access to culture.

Ask:

That in preparation of the upcoming Periodic Report, the National Point of Contact considers including examples from your country’s libraries which demonstrate how libraries have had a role in implementing the 2005 Convention and addressing challenges.

 

Step 4: Provide Examples of Libraries Contributing to the Convention’s Goals

Backing up your message with a selection of examples from your experience and that of other libraries adds power to your advocacy.

In this case, it would be a good idea to align your library’s examples with the goals of the 2005 Convention. Finding examples that align with the four goals set out in the Convention can help make a strong case to your National Contact Point for their inclusion in the Report.  The reporting period is four years, so examples can come from within that time frame.

Goal 1: Support sustainable systems of governance for culture

This might include examples of programmes, initiatives, or services that:

  • Promote information and awareness-raising activities for the culture and creative sector
  • Build capacity and/or provide training for artists and cultural professionals
  • Give support to medium, small, or micro-enterprise creative industries, such as promoting local authors and publishers, making space for art marketplaces or hosting writers or artists in residence
  • Contribute to participatory decision-making regarding cultural policy, such as making spaces for dialogue with government authorities (i.e. meetings, working groups).
  • Support digital literacy and promotion of creativity and cultural content in the digital environmental (skills and competences, creative spaces, innovation, research and development, etc.)

Goal 2: Achieve a balanced flow of cultural goods and services and increase the mobility of artists and cultural professionals

This might include examples of programmes, initiatives, or services that:

  • Connect potential beneficiaries of mobility funds to related information resources or training services
  • Participate in writing and other arts residencies or cultural events like festivals that host travelling artists or cultural professionals – notably from developing countries
  • Celebrate potentially little-known works by a diverse range of writers and other creators

 

Goal 3: Integrate culture in sustainable development frameworks

This might include examples of programmes, initiatives, or services that:

  • Promote the inclusion of culture in sustainable development plans and strategies
  • Support or facilitate cultural programmes at the regional, urban and/or rural levels, especially community-based initiatives
  • Help to ensure the right to participation in cultural life and access to culture, especially addressing the needs of disadvantaged or vulnerable groups.

 

Goal 4: Promote human rights and fundamental freedoms

This might include examples of programmes, initiatives, or services that:

  • Raise awareness of the right to participate freely in cultural life
  • Support women’s full participation in cultural life
  • Collect and manage data related to gender equality in the cultural and creative sectors
  • Advocate for writers and other artists and take a stand against limits to artistic freedom of expression

Next Steps

When you are prepared with your advocacy message, ask, and examples – it is time to reach out to the contact person you have identified. You could use the below message as a template:

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am contacting you from [LIBRARY ASSOCIATION/LIBRARY], located in [CITY]. I have noted that our country is a State Party to the 2005 Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, and that you are due to submit a periodic report in [YEAR].

In order to best demonstrate the work within [COUNTRY] to protect and promote diverse cultural expressions, it would be beneficial to include the work that libraries have done in this area over the past four years.

Libraries and their staff have a key role in preserving and providing the widest possible access to culture. They can foster an environment where diverse cultural expressions are encouraged, valued, shared, and protected – an environment in which a strong creative economy can thrive. Core values that the Convention upholds are also values that libraries champion and enable. These include freedom of information and expression, participatory democratic societies, linguistic diversity, the fundamental role of education, and recognition of the importance of the digital environment in education, creating and providing access to culture.

Some examples from our country that impact on the goals of the 2005 Convention include:

[Goal number: List examples, be brief but specific. Provide links to more information if possible]

On behalf of [LIBRARY ASSOCIATION/LIBRARY], I hope that you will consider including these examples, as they contribute to the implementation of the 2005 Convention and showcase the dedication of the nation’s libraries to this work. I remain available to answer questions or provide additional information.

We can help!

Do not hesitate to reach out to IFLA for support in your advocacy. If you have examples in mind but would like further input or require addition support in crafting your advocacy approach – be in touch. We are happy to help.

Start by emailing: Claire.mcguire@ifla.org

Gateways to Cultural Diversity: Libraries as multicultural hubs

Cultural diversity is a force for development.

It nurtures a climate of mutual understanding, celebration of differences, and critical thinking to combat pre-conceived notions of the “other”. This is a vital component of building peace, stability, and development.

UNESCO states that three-quarters of the world’s major conflicts have a cultural dimension.

In order bridge these divides, we must begin with the acceptance and recognition of cultural diversity as being central to peacebuilding. This is reflected in UNESCO’s cultural conventions, including the 2005 Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

Fully realising cultural diversity as a driver for development will take cooperation at all levels: from the local to the international, from memory institutions to civil society, individuals to policy makers.

With our mission of facilitating access to information, our role as defenders of free speech, and our responsibility of protecting and sharing the heritage of our communities, libraries are key players.

To celebrate the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development (21 May) this article will explore and hopefully inspire reflection on some of the ways libraries act as cultural hubs – as gateways connecting our communities to one another, and to diverse expressions of culture the world over.

Access to Culture

International human rights law guarantees the right to culture, to freedom of expression, and to engage in the cultural life of one’s community.

Politically motivated intolerance of different cultures, silencing voices from minority and indigenous groups, and targeted destruction of cultural heritage – these are all very real threats to the enjoyment of these rights by everyone.

In the face of this, libraries have long been champions of free speech and access to information and culture.

Upheld in IFLA’s Code of Ethics for Librarians and other Information Workers, core principles for the work of library and information professionals include:

  • Ensuring access to information for all for personal development, education, cultural enrichment, leisure, economic activity and informed participation in and enhancement of democracy.
  • Rejecting censorship in all its forms.
  • Ensuring that the right of accessing information is not denied to anyone, regardless of their age, citizenship, political belief, physical or mental ability, gender identity, heritage, education, in-come, immigration and asylum-seeking status, marital status, origin, race, religion or sexual orientation.

These principles carry over into the IFLA/UNESCO Public Library Manifesto:

The public library, the local gateway to knowledge, provides a basic condition for lifelong learning, independent decision- making and cultural development of the individual and social groups. It is a living force for education, culture and information, and as an essential agent for the fostering of peace and spiritual welfare through the minds of men and women.

Providing their communities, no matter their identity, with the freedom to read, to access information, and to participate in cultural life is central to libraries’ roles as cultural hubs.

For reflection: how can libraries uphold these key ethical principles in both their physical and digital spaces? Where are the gaps? Which members of your community may not have a platform to express and share their culture, and how might libraries help mediate that?

Preserving our Heritage

The importance of cultural heritage, in all its expressions, lies in its ability to tangibly bridge the gap between generations and between cultures. The experiential quality of monuments and sites, intangible cultural heritage, movable and documentary cultural heritage gives them an incredible potential as learning tools.

To put it simply, heritage places, objects, and expressions can make culture come to life – both for those experiencing their own heritage and those learning and appreciating the culture of others.

Libraries have multiple roles to play in this.

Preservation

On one hand, preservation and conservation work at libraries help ensure that our documentary heritage can be passed along to future generations.

On the other, access to information regarding the historical study of heritage, and the way culture was written about in the past, gives us a perspective for historical context and lessons-learned. This enhances our ability to improve representation and methodology in the study of culture today.

Access

Beyond the preservation and conservation of documentary heritage, UNESCO’s 2015 Recommendation upholds that the ability to access this heritage is equally important.

This Recommendation encourages member states to provide appropriate legislative frameworks, empowering memory institutions to provide accurate and up-to-date catalogues, and to facilitate partnerships that will enhance access.

Digitisation is an important aspect of access – and indeed when libraries’ doors are closed, an essential pre-condition.

Libraries and documentary heritage professionals are vocal supporters of digitisation policy, and the legal framework that will allow for it. For a good example, please have a look at the Guidelines to Setting up a Digital Unification Project. More information and tips for digitisation is provided online by IFLA’s Preservation and Conservation (PAC) Centres: PAC Frequently Asked Questions.

It is also important to ensure that a more diverse range of content is becoming digitised. IFLA, together with partners in the UNESCO PERSIST project, are working on updating the Guidelines for the selection of digital heritage for long-term preservation. This update seeks to expand on the Guidelines, such as including emerging technologies, to better support practitioners in the preservation of digital heritage.

For reflection: how can the preservation and conservation of cultural heritage be more inclusive? How can expressions of cultural heritage be used as learning tools, while still staying authentic to their core value as traditional social practice? What role can libraries play in connecting their communities to these expressions of cultural heritage? 

Libraries as Multicultural Centres

Libraries exist at an intersection of culture, education, and community, and through this, they become a hub for fostering cross-cultural dialogue and active citizenship.

The IFLA/UNESCO Multicultural Library Manifesto puts this quite clearly:

As libraries serve diverse interests and communities, they function as learning, cultural, and information centres. In addressing cultural and linguistic diversity, library services are driven by their commitment to the principles of fundamental freedoms and equity of access to information and knowledge for all, in the respect of cultural identity and values.

In a world where refusing, silencing, and – at times – destroying evidence of cultural diversity is politically-driven, then providing a space for cultural diversity is a powerful and profound act.

Libraries can lead their communities by example. They can be hubs for dialogue, spaces for performance, repositories for expressions of culture, and providers of services that nurture inclusion.

For reflection: How can libraries best determine what materials and services will best meet the cultural needs of their communities? How can libraries use their position as multicultural hubs in to advocate for more inclusive spaces in their communities? Collecting and sharing success stories can be powerful testimony for the importance of libraries, how can libraries do this more effectively?

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Now more than ever, the need to keep connected with one another and with cultural life is felt acutely. As many countries are grappling with the interface of the COVID-19 epidemic, economic hardship, and possibly civil unrest and natural disasters, these are times where support is greatly needed. Culture is connection and comfort, and cultural diversity is a powerful reminder of our shared humanity in the face of hardship.

This period of raised awareness of and participation in culture on digital platforms can be an opportunity for libraries to seek out better ways to keep the door to culture – and connection within their communities – open.

 

5 ways to celebrate the World Day for Cultural Diversity

21 May is the World Day for Cultural Diversity established by the UN in 2002. The day promotes cultural diversity and dialogues among nations, people and cultures.

In 2015 IFLA, in partnership with UNESCO, published The Multicultural Library – a gateway to a cultural diverse society in dialogue. Libraries serve diverse interests and communities, they function as learning, cultural, and information centres, addressing cultural and linguistic diversity serving all members of the community.

This day is an opportunity to learn and understand the value of cultural diversity. Here’s five things you can do to embrace cultural diversity

1.Visit a library exhibition dedicated to other cultures

Libraries around the world support cultural diversity and have large collections and even exhibitions on a variety of cultures and cultural heritage. For example at the National Library of South Africa the exhibition ”Treasure House of Knowledge” show cases 300 of the institutes national treasures including a 10th century illuminated gospel book, Solomon T Plaatje’s translation of Julius Caesar into Tswana and letters from Olive Schreiner to Mahatma Gandhi during a time of turbulence in South Africa.

2. Talk to someone from another religion or culture to share views on life

They say don’t judge a book by it’s cover! The Human Library is a place where real people are on loan to readers. There are Human Library events in libraries all over the world, where you can meet books such as the Refugee, the Muslim and the Convert. The Human Library supports dialogue between people, and let you learn more about other religions and cultures.

3. Read a book from another country than your own

There a plenty of languages that have nothing translated into other languages, and in countries such as the UK only 4.5 % of poetry, fiction and drama works are translations. In 2015 a movement started, having one goal: to read one book from every country in the world. The aim was to learn about different countries, cultures and people. Watch the TED talk how it all started and find the list of books from all over the world.

4. Learn about the diversity of cultures in your own country

In many countries libraries provides a historical glimpse of the country and its indigenous people. At the Native Hawaiian Library they offer services such as story telling, oral history and book launches. You can browse through Hawaiian language newspapers published between 1834 and 1948 and learn about history and language.

You can of course also ask your local librarian help you seek out the most important texts from thinkers of other cultures such as Socrates, Aristotle and Rumi.

5. Explore music from a different culture

Your local library will have a wide range of music pieces that you can borrow. Try to pick up something that you wouldn’t usually listen to, or browse through the online collection of Europeana where you can explore music recordings and other music items from across Europe.