EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL CULTURE SUMMIT 2022

Culture and a Sustainable Future

The sixth Edinburgh International Culture Summit took place at the Scottish Parliament between Friday 26 – Sunday 28 August. Titled, Culture and a Sustainable Future, Summit 2022 reflected on the urgent need for consideration of and investment in our future.

Ministers and Cultural Policy delegations from over 30 countries attended the Summit presenting a unique and vital platform to facilitate collaboration between artists, practitioners, thinkers and policy makers from across the globe.

Explore the contributors who attended Edinburgh International Culture Summit 2022.

The Culture Summit believes that global problems require global solutions, and that effective responses to the most pressing challenges facing us today must be dynamic, multifaceted, and collaborative. Culture can play a vital role in helping people all over the world discover commonality, to conceptualise the critical issues we must face, and to help imagine and create a sustainable future.

The two core themes of Summit 2022 were reflected in our programme of digital discussions that placed artists and creative directors in conversation with politicians to discuss subjects such as the legacy of COP26, and the design of creative curricula. This series, produced and hosted by our founding partners, are freely available to view on our website and YouTube channel.

The two core programme strands of the Summit were:

Theme 1: Culture & Education

Culture & Education asked what unique role the arts can play in education curricula, and how creative and collaborative skills are attained through cultural practices, developing skills and learning habits that are essential to life in a cosmopolitan and digitised world.

Theme 2: Culture & Sustainability

Culture & Sustainability highlighted the sensory aspects of art: by looking and listening, tasting, and touching, art engages us deeply and directly with the world we live in. The poetry and song, stories and rituals, and intimate knowledge of unique locations are a profound and enduring set of human relationships that we risk losing alongside our shrinking ecosystems and biodiversity.

Beyond Summit 2022

A series of urgent and fascinating interviews with sector-leading experts and artists in attendance at Summit 2022.

Fehinti Balogun, Actor and Activist

Actor, theatre maker, and activist Fehinti Balogun performs a powerful poem written for this year's Summit, which links climate change with capitalism. Fehinti’s work, including the 2021 digital performance Can I Live? explores the biggest challenges of our time through spoken word, rap, theatre, animation, and scientific fact.

Contributor(s):

Fehinti Balogun

Akram Khan, Jungle Book reimagined

Contributing to the Culture & Sustainability Plenary, world renowned dance artist Akram Khan presents a video about his highly successful Jungle Book Reimagined, which was part of this year's Edinburgh International Festival. A powerful rendition of the beloved classic, this new performance reimagines the story from the point of view of today’s children and explores the relations between nature and mankind.

Contributor(s):

Akram Khan

Akram Khan Company

mandla rae, writer and performer.

Zimbabwean-born writer and performer mandla rae gives part of this address at Edinburgh International Culture Summit 2022 in mandla's first language, isiNdebele, and speaks of belonging, power, and the importance of all cultures being represented in art spaces and political spaces.

Contributor(s):

mandla rae

Volodymyr Sheiko, Director General at the Ukrainian Institute

Volodymyr Sheiko, Director General at the Ukrainian Institute, gives an insight into what Ukrainian artists are experiencing and how artists themselves are instrumental in ensuring the survival of Ukrainian culture. The video also features a moving performance from Maryna Krut, a Ukrainian singer and bandura player, which an instrument that represents Ukrainian culture and was banned during the Soviet occupation of the country.

Contributor(s):

Volodymyr Sheiko

Ukrainian Institute

Galyna Grygorenko, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Culture and Information Policy

Galyna Grygorenko, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Culture and Information Policy, at Edinburgh International Culture Summit 2022. In this poignant intervention, she discusses the hardships faced by the Ukrainian cultural sector, from the upcoming struggle to survive the winter months to the scarce financial help for artists. She points out that art and culture are fundamental in the war effort, and only by prioritising their survival will Ukraine be able to come out victorious at the end of what is fundamentally a war on culture.
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