World culture summit

The World Heritage Summit (World Culture Forum) is a series of events on world culture. It is in contrast to the World Economic Forum , which deals with the development of the world economy. The idea of the world cultural summit and the founding participants go back to the Forum Tiberius .

development

A founding symposium with around 300 representatives from art, politics, business, science and religion was held from November 23 to 25, 2007 in Dresden . This is considered the first world culture summit. The European Congress for a World Culture Forum should also take place in Dresden from February 26th to March 1st, 2009. In an interview with the MDR, co-initiator Hans-Joachim Frey (General Director of the Bremen Theater) announced the short-term postponement of the event to October 2009. The reason is the insufficient response from the partners addressed in view of the international financial crisis. The second World Culture Summit then took place with more than 80 national and international opinion leaders and over 500 guests from all over the world from October 8th to 10th, 2009 in the orangery of the Transparent Factory of Volkswagen AG in Dresden. One result was the Dresden Manifesto , an appeal with ten demands and wishes to the group of the twenty most important industrialized and emerging countries . Sri Sri Ravi Shankar received the first WCF Culture Award at this summit.

Since 2013, the summit has been regularly organized by the government of Indonesia under the name World Culture Forum under the auspices of UNESCO and takes place in Bali .

target

With reference to the location of the World Economic Forum , the event aims to establish a “Davos of Culture”. The aim of the summit is "in view of the climate catastrophe and the dominance of the economy to initiate a society-wide dialogue that is intended to raise public awareness of the importance of culture and science ". The founding members Johannes Heinrichs and Kurt Biedenkopf had worked out a proposal in which culture is redefined as an independent social level alongside and independently of economy, politics and religion. In order to develop and represent culture in society, they also called for a separate cultural parliament.

Founders and partners

Gläserne Manufaktur , venue for the founding symposium

The founding group includes u. a .:

The following acted as partners:

criticism

The young world criticized that it was not about culture and even less about the world, but about "saving the West in the face of the spread of vulgar capitalism".

Patron of the Foundation symposium was the Saxon Prime Minister Georg Milbradt (CDU), under whose significant endorsement virtually the same time the construction of the Waldschlößchenbrücke began: Because of bridge that had UNESCO , the World Heritage Dresden Elbe Valley already on the Red List of World Heritage in Danger set (2009 the title was finally withdrawn). In front of the venue, demonstrators described Milbradt as the "worst possible representative" of the summit and protested by sawing the Dresden World Heritage certificate. As a “replacement” for the meeting that was canceled at the beginning of 2009, opponents of the bridge from Dresden organized a “World Heritage Forum” on March 14, 2009.

literature

Johannes Heinrichs : Culture - in the art of concepts. With a foreword by Kurt Biedenkopf to the World Culture Forum in Dresden. Steno, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-954-449-327-1