Cultural dialogue
We create structural understanding to enable stimulation of creativity, intercultural exchange, and heritage preservation. Our programs are impartial and international. We would like to encourage social cohesion through introduction of approaches toward expression and abilities for self-development. We partake and invite to partake in a democratic participation with a sense of future orientation in-mind.
As differences in culture of upbringing serve to emphasize interpersonal and intergroup differences, common cultural heritage serves to emphasize similarities between people. Culture in which people live influences how the people construct images of themselves and the world around them, convey information, and interact with the people around. “Right” and “wrong” cultures appear in people’s consciousness, whose representatives lead a “right” or “wrong” way of life. In general, people who have internal locus of control, complex cognitive system, and social support cope better with cultural shock. It can not be forgotten that intercultural differences are the key to community development. They provide an opportunity to look critically at usual norms and values and can become a source of new ideas and behaviours.
Culture is considered as a set of activities and behaviour, objects and traditions, rules and norms, a mechanism for learning and problem solving, forms of organisation of social life, as well as a source of origin. Questions arise, as to: By what parameters should cultures be classified? How universal are socio-psychological phenomena? What happens to a person when the person moves from one culture to another?
Cultural dialogue program discusses such features as individualism and collectivism, simplicity and complexity, openness and closedness, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and femininity, long-term and short-term time orientation, traditional values and secular-rational values, survival and self-expression, autonomy and belonging, equality and hierarchy, harmony and mastery. Most cultures are somewhere between each dimension, however cultures that resort to close proximity to either pole on the continuum experience serious problems. For the purposes of enabling expression in intercultural social environment the program further familiarises with such considerations as recognition of the stimulus, subjective experience of emotions, expression of emotions, recognition of emotions, styles of communication, socially oriented and personally oriented styles, distribution of resources, helping behaviour, and functioning in small groups.
Societies are assessed as multicultural, pluricultural, and intercultural. In all cases memory and heritage contribute to the construction of collective identity. Physical spaces become filled with sites of memory. Spaces are not monolith to ideology and prevalent social order, but rather they account for mutability of memory, different and discomforting counter-narratives. They respond to contestations of power and privilege, means to life, and symbolic representations. History and heritage can be contested, transformational, and open to foreign cultures through cosmopolitanism.
Cultural outlook encompasses core arts, cultural industries, and creative industries. All those areas pose opportunities for participation. From visual and performing arts and heritage to film, television, radio, music, books, and press, as well as design, architecture, and advertising – individuals and groups can choose exciting and viable forms of engagement and growth.
Social cohesion arises out of stimulation of creativity, intercultural exchange, and heritage preservation. However, culture is often linked to innovation and economic development that reinforces economic dominance, but simultaneously allows for balancing of economic development with social interests, promotion of education for less privileged individuals and groups. Solo focus on economic interests endangers social development and entire society. Furthermore, cultural representation of people’s cultures is integral to preservation of socio-economic participatory abilities. Proper integration, reintegration, and assimilation can not be denied as elements of importance to social cohesion.
Freedoms are organised and that organisation poses an interesting idea to understanding culture through policy lens. Policies exist within governments to enable operation of national spaces and bring an additional layer of complexity to cultural and creative visions. Simultaneously culture can not be understood as subordinate since culture arises from bottom up and becomes brought top-down affirming and reaffirming or reapproaching the frameworks to culture that further become embodied in policies. Construction of new narratives or preservation of established narratives include consideration for innovation, socio-economic development, and creative and cultural dimensions.
Culture is seen as worth being distinguished from innovation and the economic paradigm out of the value for open-ended process that develops in certain historical context and under certain conditions, without necessary or immediate goals.
In part, therefore, Cultural dialogue is produced to enable better understanding and ability to navigate culture, to interpret and overall interact with the world around. The program seeks to enable audience’s ability to apply some of the gained knowledge in an intentional and proactive way such as to engage in arts, join tourism and welcoming efforts, have the creative juices to hold an event or to start a company. Being more introduced and educated on the matter of culture improves individual ability to participate in democratic ways and have societies with better potential for wellbeing, happiness, and self-actualisation. These dimensions mean to live in better socio-economic societies because societies are made of people and by the people.
Prolonged direct contact between representatives of different cultures, elements of one or more cultures change. Such process is known as the process of acculturation. Other important processes are associated with psychological, socio-cultural, and economic adaptation.
Culture and working with culture imply a complex multifactorial system that is viewed from a socio-cultural point of view. Psychological and socio-cultural adaptability is determined by such considerations as personal characteristics, events that have occurred in person’s life, and social support, as well as knowledge of the culture, the intensity of communication with its representatives and attitudes toward the receiving party. Identification, as opposed to general categorisation, implies the transformation of cultural identity. Formation of social identity is closely linked to the awareness of one’s belonging to a particular cultural community.
For example, migration confronts migrants entering a new culture with such issues as preserving their cultural heritage and inclusion in the culture of the host country. Program introduces and elaborates upon ideas of marginalisation, separation, assimilation, and integration. Migrants who strongly identify with their native culture are noted to be more willing to combine elements of two cultures and are less willing to completely dissolve in a new country. Responses to such human phenomena vary and the more native residents of the host country identify with their ethnic group the more they want migrants to choose assimilation. This social complexity requires intercultural sensitivity. Each culture has its own specifics that distinguish others. In general, people contribute to each other and complement each other once recognise these nuanced interpersonal and intergroup phenomena, and when basic agreements are not violated, and communication extends beyond the scope of violent relations.
Cultural dialogue further delves into incorporation of post-migration cultural and religious diversity, concept of migrating heritage, advantages and limits of citizen participation in heritage preservation, role of historians and local associations, role of local and national authorities.
Urban spaces enable people to choose from exciting and viable forms of engagement and growth, but simultaneously they provide space for expression of own creativity and culture, and achievement of social cohesion and integration. Attraction and retention of creative people is argued to stimulate urban growth. In this endeavour, social wellbeing and mutual understanding can not be overlooked.
Cultural events and media are noted to positively contribute to advancement of public interests and safeguarding of social spaces. Media literacy is an important contemporary sociality for democratic participation.
Definition of local, national, and regional identity and culture is another area of dialogue and multimedia communication that positively contributes to the democratic fabric of society and enables people’s participation. Individuals, groups, and institutions intervene in the process of identity shaping with consideration for the past and acknowledgement of the present. Thus, enabling for realisation of philosophies and political theories, religions and ideologies, and traditional expressions, as well as lesser-known languages, local customs, minority cultures, migrant community traditions, and new forms of art as informative of contemporary socio-economic, scientific, and cultural achievements.
Stimulation of creativity, intercultural exchange, and heritage preservation are further enhanced by new opportunities and challenges posed by the information technologies. Digital travel places emphasis on the need for cultural activities to remain social when we speak of the cultural sector, however cultural and diplomatic exchanges do take the conversation across a whole range of spaces such as local, national, international, and transcontinental.
In some contexts, territorial decentralisation does not meet the quality of social and economic integration required to serve as a decent and dignifying alternative. Already in part of the discussion of the urban social fabric, considerations for reaching marginalised groups such as unemployed youth and their integration into socio-economic participation and effectively into the labour market poses a complex activity. Accentuation of social outreach of visual and performing arts and heritage, film, television, radio, music, books, and press, as well as design, architecture and advertising toward particular groups rather than territorial approach has been noted as one of the models of spatial organisation. The focus is on the contribution toward addressing spatial and socioeconomic inequalities within the cities through meeting of the individual and collective needs. Serving people rather than prejudice means to uphold the socio-economic development due to proper release of the social potential based on inclusive socio-economic-cultural considerations.
Civil identity which, again, should not be confused with categorisation, determines the place of residence of a person, while ethnic identity determines belonging to an ethnic group. Ethnic and civil identities would only coincide in countries where representatives of the same ethnic group reside. However, most modern countries are inhabited by citizens of different ethnicity and it is the civil identity that is used to unite inhabitants of such countries with each other. Furthermore, the consciousness of civil identity embodies such forms of civil identity as patriotism as an attitude and an action, constructive and blind, cultural and political, civil and chauvinistic, as well as overall nationalism as opposed to patriotism. Patriotism as an attitude encompasses positive emotional or cognitive assessment of one’s country, while patriotism as an action is actions aimed at prosperity of one’s country.
The program explains the understanding of patriotism from the point of view of blind and constructive patriotism, in which people either have a positive attitude toward their country and turn blind eye to its shortcomings, or have a positive attitude toward their country, but see its shortcomings and believe that they need to be eliminated.
As much as cultural events and media participate in achievement of public interests, by no means can they be taken for granted. Media pluralism can be assessed based on dimension of basic protection, market plurality, social inclusiveness, and political independence of the media. Markets are further assessed based on their density, transparency, ways in which they are controlled, and the risks associated with them. Moreover, assessment of social inclusiveness questions the ways in which a county is able to have all of its population included in the democratic debate.
Social and cultural considerations in mind, the idea of identity not supported by reason can be considered endlessly if, moreover, it is not reunited with personal meaning – it is powerless. People find themselves in a dead end of reasoning bound by the temporary organisation of meaningless life by a person experiencing at least an identity crisis. Therefore, the idea of space is not solely a matter of physical spaces and abstract sociality, but rather a measurable and curated construct in time. Cultural dialogue discusses the sense of identity in relation to time as an integral part of human experience. Content that is definitive to purpose and values holds the answer to the meaning of life. Objects are as full as people’s moments. Psychology views social existence as a confluence with one’s roles and loss of personality and as a position of arbitrariness in which everyone is actively trying to grab a well-deserved piece of happiness from the world at any cost, without thinking about others. This in its own way returns to the issues of social and economic contestations and regulation of culture through political intervention, together with people and society, asking the question of their identity, searching for and realising oneself. The meaning of life is noted to connect person’s entire life in its retrospective and perspective into an integrality through which the life process surpasses temporality and gains transtemporality since understanding the past and designing the future occur in a single act. Meaning is understood as an act of reflection of reality in consciousness and as such as capable to change reality.
At the same time, human behaviour is a relationship between mental attitudes and readiness. In the reality of the psyche, events are not random, but rather conform to the logic of that reality. The conditions of reality determine person’s orientation, and person’s orientation represents the motivational and semantic structure of activity. Participation in any type of activity should be considered as a life plan that includes two types of goals, ideal as final and real and specific as auxiliary. Final goals imply ideals and values and are stable, while real goals are specific and achievable and can change depending on successes and failures. Thus, there is a close relationship between life plan, goals and values. Cultural dialogue esteems to enable its audience to acquire knowledge, shape understanding, and gain opportunities to engage in arts, join tourism and welcoming efforts, hold own events or start a company.
The structure of life is complex in its organisation, however understanding of synergy enables for successful interpretation and interaction. Life is never quite finished since it is always becoming, and this is especially true for young people. Finding optimal scenarios, developments of events, and mastering methods of self-organisation as means of managing processes of one’s development enables people in their life’s plan.
Cultural industries are complimented and compliment upon commercial and cultural development and together help to address the challenges of inequality and difficult diversity. Opportunities of participation can also be seen in training to help create dialogue and improve access to art, culture, and creativity for the diverse populations across all territorial lines. Taking advantage of museum spaces in part of the intercultural exchange, exploration of heritage preservation in part of generating cultural services to attract tourist and businesses, development of diverse and socially inclusive heritage representation are all avenues for socio-economic participation with culture in mind.