unitwin

UNITWIN Network

THE UNITWIN NETWORK ON CULTURAL POLICIES, DIVERSITY AND TRANSFORMATION
 

The UNITWIN Network on Cultural Policies, Diversity, and Transformation brings together UNESCO Chairs, academic researchers, and civil society organizations from eight countries with diverse geographical backgrounds, including five UNESCO Chairs (Hildesheim, Istanbul, Belgrade, Québec, Johannesburg). It and has been confirmed by UNESCO in 2024.

The idea for this network emerged during the Civil Society Forum at the 2005 Convention in Paris, which has provided an essential platform for exchange and cooperation among organizations with interests and activities related to the Convention. In addition to discussing and supporting the implementation of the UNESCO 2005 Convention, the participating UNESCO Chair holders and their team members identified the need to make existing research visible, discuss research needs and findings, and initiate further research.

The Network aims to strengthen and bundle research activities related to the implementation of UN initiatives such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the UNESCO Convention of the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, and international collaboration in arts and cultures, creativity, cultural rights, processes of transformation in society, and digitalization. It emphasizes the need to update and rethink cultural policies and cooperation from the perspectives of diversity and decolonization.

The collective objective is to establish and maintain exchange between academic and non-academic institutions involved in cultural policies research, debate, and training. It aims to create a community assembling established researchers and thinkers alongside silenced/marginalized and young upcoming voices, while keeping a balance between positions from South, North, and in-between.

To achieve its goals, the Network will start and deepen activities related to fostering debate and dialogue, research, publication and visibility, and capacity development. It aims to create a platform for open, diversity-valuing debates and positions that question former hierarchies in definitions, and it supports making culture the 18th goal of the global development agenda beyond 2030.

Members beside the UNESCO Chair Hildesheim are: 

• UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Cultural Diplomacy at Istanbul Bilgi University
• UNESCO Chair on Interculturalism, Art Management and Mediation, University of Arts Belgrade
• UNESCO Chair on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, Law Faculty, Laval University
• Zimbabwe Open University
• Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies at the University of Warwick
• UNESCO Chair in Cultural Entrepreneurship and Policy, University of the Witwatersrand 
• Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny Abidjan-Cocody
• Al Mawred Al Thaqafy / Culture Resource
• STAND Foundation
• University of Antwerp

Events:

• Last Turn before 2030 (SDGs) – Challenges for Cultural Policies 06.05.25

• Stories from academia - The 2005 Convention between the poles of change and Polarisation 19.06.25