The UNESCO Chair on Visual Anticipation and Futures Literacy towards Visual Literacy attended the MONDIACULT 2025, UNESCO’s World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development in Barcelona the previous week. It was a unique experience not only for what was said, or for what remained unsaid, but especially for some interesting contradictions between the two.
MONDIACUL 2025 built on the MONDIACULT 2022 final declaration and the Mexico 1982 conference, consciously attempting to address noted gaps in the Pact of the Future document, the outcome of the UN Summit for the Future, and the UN 17 SDGs. These are vital initiatives that highlight the urgency of examining the collective challenges we face through lenses broader than economics and simple metrics.
Official delegations shared a broad spectrum of stances on what culture is and what it serves as, ranging from “We need to understand heritage within solidarity”; “Culture builds empathy”; “Culture is about diverse perspectives that break down stereotypes and communication patterns”; “Culture is about emotions”; “Culture makes us think of the unbelievable”, or “Culture is a practical tool of surviving and not about identity”, to “My culture is my identity”; “Culture is who we are”; “We feel the need to safeguard culture as the most important thing we have”; “Our heritage is our national stories, memories and identity”; “Nation is cultural identity”. Arts, artistic creation or arts education attracted much less attention.
Here is where I noticed some interesting contradictions and I feel the need to share my thoughts and reflections.
Culture is too broad as a concept for such generic statements to do justice to it. It is the sine-qua-non condition we live and breathe from birth to death, knowing or not, wanting or not and, perhaps, sometimes we even fail to notice it precisely because it resides in the core of our existence. Consequently, the question that arises is what culture we have in mind when talking about ‘culture’. Is it the current cultural systems each one and all make part of, with the modes of life, values and mindsets, ideologies and worldviews that imbue them? Is it arts of the last 150 years and contemporary art creation with the power they have to call attention to social challenges and illustrate new ways of thinking and being? Or is it cultural heritage?
Culture can, indeed, break down stereotypes and hold a powerful, strategic role in “addressing the challenges of our time, from climate change to poverty, inequality, the digital divide and ever more complex emergencies and conflicts”. It can certainly “enrich our lives” and “help build inclusive, innovative and resilient communities”, but under conditions.
If we approach our cultural heritage as something precious and sacred – which turns it into a taboo – the question is, how shall we critically question and deconstruct it? If nation is cultural identity, if heritage is our national stories, memories and identity, if we need to safeguard it as the most important thing we have, then how can it foster “unity through shared values and traditions” or work towards “peaceful and sustainable societies”? We can certainly build empathy, unity and solidarity through culture, but towards whom? Our own nation-state ‘tribe’ or towards all human and non-human beings on this planet? Culture has a very sad record of being used as the spearhead to enhance political power. It has been repeatedly transitioned from a tool of soft power to a pretext for conflict, division, and human degradation.
What can unify and build bridges within cultures, can equally divide and destroy. UNESCO has the vision of peace as a cornerstone goal and this is exactly why details matter. For example, it is important to keep in mind that the main source of building social and cultural stereotypes – therefore roles, behaviors, expectations and assumptions – have been arts from antiquity until the 19th century. The simple reason is that they were not the outcome of the artists’ free choice, worldviews or emotions but sponsored by political and religious authorities, patrons dedicated to maintaining and increasing their power. Arts – and the rituals that involved them – were illustrated books for illiterate people and had a very clear purpose to fulfil: Remind of the values and stories that held their society together, teach, train and reinforce sense of identity and duty, roles and stances. The very few exceptions that exist do not invalidate the rule. We have inherited these stereotypes to a much greater extent than we think.
Two more points: Arts indeed inflict emotional reactions on their audiences, but until the era of romanticism, affect was a calculated leverage for alignment behind ‘official’, dominant worldviews. Hence the relentless repetition of the same themes in clear and compelling narratives. The second point: Our cultural heritage and our natural heritage are two different things. We reached the point of the environmental crisis we all experience because of the stereotypes Westen culture carries for centuries involving the superiority of humans. We have illustrated and narrated that superiority in a variety of effective means. It is not accidental that landscapes did not make a stand-alone genre of artistic expression before mid-19th century: They were not a handy topic to propagate ideas and values. Again, very few exceptions make part of the abovementioned exceptions and do not change the facts.
When we strive to protect our heritage, shouldn’t we be aware of these ‘details’? This does not mean to retroactively censor the past, or discard it, not at all. I firmly underline that. I mean to critically approach our cultural heritage, challenging its mystified and oversimplified narratives so that we can learn and become aspiring agents of personal and social transformation. We ended up dividing the world into villains and heroes because of our firm belief in stories and myths. What does “the need to preserve culture for both individuals and societies” involve? Do we want to preserve all aspects of traditions? For example, are we interested in going back to our grant-parents’ way of living? I do not think so. Their habits, values and traditions are part of our heritage, as well, but they do not serve us anymore. And we do not feel like ‘betraying’ them by not reviving their customs. How do we choose what to change and what to ‘preserve’? Another example: We strive for gender and social equality and equity, but how about gender and class in-equalities embedded in some cultures? How “acceptance of beliefs, diversity and the preservation of traditions” works with our struggle to gender, social and race equity and equality? These are challenging puzzles, and our attitude towards change as a form of ‘losing’ does not help. On the contrary, our fear hinders our ability to be resilient, to adapt, or, even more, it compromises our willingness to imagine alternative futures before circumstances arise
Culture is an endless resource of knowledge as was stated several times throughout the conference when the topic of culture and climate crisis was discussed. But we urgently need first to explore and deconstruct the stories we tell ourselves about our individual and our collective identities. Unless we understand why we care for what we do and what tacitly lies behind it, it will be difficult to create space to listen and understand the ‘other’. As late Jane Goodall mentioned in her book 40 Years at Gombe “Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved”.