ARTERIAL NETWORK: CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT

Sunday, 07 March 2010 16:50

Introduction
There are 53 countries in Africa of which 17 celebrate 50 years of independence this year, 2010. Of the 50 countries ranked at the bottom of the Human Development Index that measures literacy, education, life expectancy and quality of life, 39 are on the African continent. The situation is worse if one considers that Zimbabwe and Somalia are not included in this list because of a lack of data.
So what has 50 years of independence, 50 years of development, 50 years of “the cultural dimension of development” meant for Africa? If mike

development’s aim is to enable people to live long and creative lives (as stated in the UNDP Report), it has been a massive failure in Africa; fewer than 15 countries have life expectancy rates of 50 or more. What is the relationship between development and human rights and democracy if the African country rated highest on the Human Development Index (HDI) is Libya, with no democracy, a poor human rights record, but an average life expectancy of 77? What is the relationship between economic growth, democracy and development if South Africa with the largest economy on the continent, the highest levels of sustained growth over the last 15 years, and a vibrant electoral democracy with 4 elections in the last 15 years, now has the largest gap between rich and poor, the highest levels of unemployment in its history and a declining life expectancy?
The AU ministers of culture adopted the Nairobi Plan of Action committing governments to cultural policies, protecting the rights of artists, investing in cultural industries, developing leadership capacity, etc. But as far back as 1976, the heads of state and of governments in the Organisation of African Unity adopted the African Cultural Charter which committed African countries ‘to work out a national cultural policy’ and ‘integrate the cultural development plan in the overall program for economic and social development.
For at least 40 years, the notion of the ‘cultural dimension of development’ - that culture is integral to development, and that cultural development and planning must be incorporated into and cut across other sectors such as economic, social and human development - has been recognised internationally and within Africa.
The signatories to the 2009 Brussels Declaration by Artists and Cultural Professionals and Entrepreneurs state in the preamble:
After so many conferences where clear diagnoses were established and specific recommendations were made but not pursued, after so many resolutions, programmes and action plans rarely put into practice, it is with a mixture of scepticism and hope that we have come to participate in this Colloquium. The European Union has developed, over many years, important cultural cooperation programmes with all ACP countries. However, these programmes have not really been able to deliver national cultural policies nor helped to build more structured and professional cultural sectors at a national or regional level. Moreover, they remained limited to the cultural sector, with no real influence on development policies.
So why should it be different now? It can only be different now if civil society plays a more active role, not because government is different or international pressures are different, but because civil society is much more aggressive in looking after its interests. Arterial Network is about civil society in the African creative sector taking a more active interest in its own future.

Parable
The following is a parable about African experience of cultural discourses emanating from elsewhere:
There was Francine, sitting in Rwanda, minding her own – micro - business and creating her traditional cow dung paintings, when along came a Belgian development agency worker and suggested to her that she could get some funding to support her work if she could just frame her application in the language of culture and development. She was still working through the various definitions of development and wondering whether it was a good thing to be “developed” or not, when another Belgian consultant dropped by and asked if she knew about the Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions since cultural diversity was the new language through which to access funding. Francine had just learned the full title of the Convention when a German expert was parachuted in to explain to her that what she was doing was a cultural industry, and that cultural industries were now the next big thing in development-speak. No sooner had she learned how to spell “entrepreneur” when she was approached by an international NGO to participate in their intercultural dialogue project, which they said, was on the cutting edge of contemporary cultural discourse. She was trying to tell them that this was something they were doing in Rwanda ever since you could say Hutu and Tutsi, when a guy in a raincoat flashed in front of her, urging her to participate in a culture and climate change project which had just received a flood of funding!   Just then, along came a European theatre troupe to train Francine, a painter, in cultural diplomacy.
What, you may be wondering, are the points implied in this little parable?
First, contemporary cultural discourse often has its origins in the so-called developed world, within circumstances relevant to those conditions, but which has less meaning for, or sensitivity to the conditions in African countries.
Second, such discourses often breed industries of consultants, conferences, think tanks, etc so that cultural industries are not limited to the production of creative goods; in order to survive and grow, the cultural discourse industries require transnational markets.
Third, where a discourse – or a cultural discourse industry – has relevance beyond a government signatory, it has to be understood, interpreted and applied within, and to local conditions on the African continent, conditions which are not at all homogenous across countries or regions.
Fourth, global structural inequities and the lack of public sector support for the arts on the continent, create dependency and with it, the conditions for passive acceptance of, rather than rigorous engagement with cultural discourse industries, in order perhaps, to access associated funding.
Fifth, these cultural discourse industries are seldom “neutral” and often serve – in content, practice or tone – particular interests, or have embedded in them, values, worldviews and assumptions biased in favour of certain paradigms.
Let’s go back to Francine who was still mulling over her options when a government official arrives, with a delegation of Chinese companies. They inform her that her home that doubles as her studio has to be demolished as it is in the direct path of a railway line that the Chinese are about to build, and that will run directly from the Rwandan forests where a major logging industry was being hatched, to the Tanzanian harbour. But, the Chinese will also construct a five-storey building to house all the crafters and artists in the region, and will include a retail outlet for their products. And, if these sell well enough, the Chinese may send in their own artists to learn how to create traditional Rwandan art and craft, and reproduce it cheaper in China.
The Belgian and German consultants, European development workers and NGOs who had been engaging with Francine in the “best developmental interests of her community and of Rwanda”, are completely gobsmacked by this “blatant Chinese neo-imperialism” and assure Francine that they will help her to fight against this!
All Francine wants to do, is create her paintings to sell to the tourists returning from their “spot-the-gorillas” expeditions.
But of course, she can’t. Her creative practice is directly impacted upon by global economic and hegemonic forces far beyond what she could imagine.
Whether things will change is moot, but for us, it can only be through the mobilisation of civil society and the building of sustainable, active artist networks nationally, regionally and globally. This cannot be emphasised enough!

Towards an understanding of development
The Human Development Report (their definition of development is used in the 1998 Cultural Diversity Report) states that ‘the basic purpose of development is to enlarge people’s choices…the objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives’. It goes on to affirm Aristotle’s view that ‘wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful for the sake of something else.’ (This is fundamentally different to some societies where seeking wealth is an end its own right).
The following is proposed as a working definition of development: ‘the ongoing generation and application of resources to create and sustain the optimal conditions in which human beings may enjoy all the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’.
Perhaps, we need to be reminded of some of the key human rights:
Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion;
Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression;
Article 22: Everyone…has the right to social security
Article 23 (1): Everyone has the right to work
Article 25 (1): Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care
Article 26 (1): Everyone has the right to education..
Article 27 (1): Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts
Article 28: Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realised.

Leaders of 170 countries agreed on a set of 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by 2015. Given the position of most African countries at the lower end of the Human Development Index, the MDGs have particular relevance to Africa.
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development (own emphasis again – as with the Human Rights Declaration, global partnerships are deemed important)
Given the environmental destruction wreaked in the name of ‘development’, it has become fashionable to talk of sustainable development which is defined as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.

The cultural dimension of development
Historically, this notion arose out of the analysis that development was ineffective because culture ‘got in the way’.
However, the links between culture and development are almost always considered in terms of the culture of the supposed beneficiaries of development, and the extent to which their values, ideas, beliefs, customs, traditions, etc facilitate or hinder development.   It is perhaps equally important to turn the looking glass the other way to consider the extent to which the values, ideology, beliefs, customs, ideas and morals i.e. the culture of the global north and their economic and security interests, pose obstacles to real development and/or dictate, define or place pressure for certain kinds of development to take place.
While the anthropological understanding of culture may resonate and interface clearly with development, it is much more difficult to make a case for the arts and the creative sector generally within the ‘cultural dimension of development’.
In recent times, the creative sector and proponents of the cultural dimension of development have emphasised the creative industries and their potential contribution to development. But the much-vaunted contributions of the creative industries – job creation, income-generation, product development for export markets, etc – are framed within the most narrow, conservative and traditional definition of development, one maligned as a neoliberal practice that emphasises economic growth as the key indicator of development.
According to UNCTAD’s Creative Economy Report 2008, Africa’s contribution to world trade in cultural goods and services is less than 1% of such trade. Many would urge African governments to invest in the creative industries because of the success of these industries in the so-called developed world in the last 25 years, with the key motivation being the creative industries as a potentially significant economic driver.
However, creative industries, in order to survive and flourish, require significant local, regional and/or international markets. How sustainable are creative industries in a region – Africa - where most people live on less than $2 a day?
The emphasis on the creative industries as the best contribution that the creative sector can make to ‘development’ in the hope of convincing sceptical politicians of the value of the arts, ironically runs the risk of undermining the arts as these are reduced to their economic value and to ‘what the market wants’ and their broader value to society is compromised as investments and subsidies are made primarily to those disciplines and cultural activities that show the best economic return.
There are three broad categories of artistic practice that have relevance to the ‘cultural dimension of development’.
a.   the arts practised for their own sake and in their own right as creative means through which a society or community reflects on itself, and is challenged to move on or is affirmed in where they are
b.   the arts utilised for overt developmental purposes or for socially good ends such as the use of theatre to spread health messages, or to promote intercultural dialogue
c.   the creative industries where the primary drivers are the generation of profit and other economic benefits through the arts
In terms of development – and the cultural dimension of development – for us, the arts for their own sake may broadly refer to personal, human development: means for personal enlightenment, enjoyment, catharsis, an affirmation of Article 27 of the Declaration of Human Rights in which everyone has the right to participate in the cultural life of the community and to enjoy the arts!
The instrumentalization of the arts for some end may be viewed as social development i.e. the arts playing a role in helping societies to transform and become better constructs in which human beings may enjoy their lives.
Creative industries are part of economic development, the more traditional form of “development” where economic growth is emphasised in order to generate resources, allegedly to serve other developmental initiatives (although this seldom happens with economic development often enriching only a few and creating a new elite).
These three forms of artistic practice are not mutually exclusive, neither are they part of a hierarchy; they are all relevant, but the emphasis and application will depend on the context, and they cannot simply be applied in a “one size fits all” fashion. Problems arise when one is emphasised at the expense of others or when they are set up as being in tension with each other, rather than as part of continuum which has validity depending on the context in which it is practiced. The reality for many artists (certainly in the global south) is that she performs in a play at night (art for its own sake); the next morning she participates in a theatre for development project teaching people about how to avoid HIV/AIDS (instrumentalisation of theatre), and in the afternoon, she takes part in a piece of corporate theatre selling an insurance product (creative industries).

What are our key needs and challenges?
The key challenges and needs for Arterial Network are not the discourses of culture and development, creative industries, intercultural dialogue, cultural diplomacy or climate change and its impact on culture. The challenges are much more basic.
These may be allocated to five broad categories:
a.   building sustainable artists networks, lobby, defend, advocate in the interests of the independent civil society sector in each African country
b.   building capacity - leadership – to take ownership, to represent the organisation and network; this includes developing policy experts, cultural entrepreneurs, promoters and creating toolkits in marketing, fundraising, policy, networking, etc so that the trained can train others
c.   information, research, dissemination: about countries, about artists, about festivals, events, etc
d.   building regional markets, accessing international markets – not AID, but trade; create enabling environment for trade, touring, travelling exhibitions, theatre productions i.e. putting the Unesco Convetion into practice and
e.   opportunities to create, encourage creation, innovation – dance, theatre, music, literature, etc and to fund these for own sake e.g. through our proposed African Fund for Arts and Culture

Conclusion
As stated in the MDGs and the Human Rights declaration, we need partnerships. Partnerships require that we be honest with each other. Sometimes, north-south relations are characterised by patronising attitudes, by the north having difficulty in listening to critiques from the south, by the south being defensive when the north critiques unacceptable practices, by feelings of being threatened. We need to recognise the unequal power relations when the north funds much of global partnerships, collaborations and exchanges, but we need to work out pragmatically, honestly and with mutual respect how we will work together, not just in changing our own worlds – in Africa, Europe or Latin America – but in changing our global world order to one that is more just and structurally equitable.

Mike van Graan
Secretary General: Arterial Network
See www.arterialnetwork.org for the larger “Culture and Development” Discussion Paper