Culture invites the autonomous communities to actively take part in Mondiacult 2025

The Minister for Culture, Ernest Urtasun, together with the Ministers for Culture of the regional governments and cities of Ceuta and Melilla

Ernest Urtasun chaired the meeting of the plenary session of the Sectoral Conference on Culture at the Artium Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country in Vitoria-Gasteiz, which was attended by the culture ministers of all the autonomous communities and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla. As the minister said in his welcoming remarks, this is "a conversation between administrations that aims to develop sustainable and effective cultural policies, always based on the diversity of voices and views that converge here".

Among the issues to be discussed at the forum, Urtasun highlighted two processes: the drafting of the Cultural Rights Plan and the holding of Mondiacult 2025, "an international event that will place our country and our administrations in the global focus of cultural policies and reflection on culture". In the words of the minister in this regard, "we have encouraged all the autonomous communities to take an active part in Mondiacult. We want all the forums of this world conference to be great showcases for the culture of our country in all its linguistic and territorial diversity".

Participation of the autonomous communities

With regard to the Cultural Rights Plan, the minister reported on the work and progress being made, encouraging all the autonomous communities to take part in its development, together with the various agents in the sector and the public. In this respect, the contributions entirely in harmony with the plan's proposals already made by several autonomous communities were highlighted and acknowledged. They address issues such as the decentralisation of culture to promote the right to culture in rural areas, the independence and freedom of culture, the connection of culture and education, the importance of cultural mediation for the guarantee of cultural rights, linguistic diversity, and the importance of evaluating cultural policies.

The broad collaborative process is still underway, gathering feedback, ideas and input to make it as inclusive and representative as possible. There are several ways to take part. There is an online platform available to all citizens, open until 17 November; specialised questionnaires aimed at experts and agents, which allow them to exchange diagnoses of the situation and proposals to enrich the plan in the thematic areas of interest; and meetings and gatherings with the sector to ensure a broad and significant contribution to the plan's development. The Sectoral Conference on Culture itself is also channelling the contributions of the autonomous communities, which have until December to submit their own proposals.

This instrument will detail the actions to be undertaken by the Ministry of Culture, integrating a diagnosis of the current situation, the identification of specific objectives to be achieved and the concrete measures for their fulfilment. In essence, the plan aims to ensure that all citizens can access and enjoy culture on equal terms, promoting cultural diversity and protecting the rights of creators and professionals in the sector.

The Cultural Rights Plan will be articulated around thirteen interconnected thematic lines, each with its respective working group led by a coordinator for each line and a person responsible for promotion and reporting. These thematic lines are 'Local development and community action', 'Education and culture', 'Cultural mediation', 'Gender equality', 'Ethnic and racial diversity', 'Linguistic diversity', 'Disability', 'Inequality', 'Intergenerational culture', 'Sustainability and Agenda 2030', 'Digital rights', 'Evaluation of cultural policies' and 'Regulatory adequacy, good practices and governance'.

Mondiacult 2025: Towards a Sustainable Development Goal for Culture

The whole process of drawing up the Cultural Rights Plan will take a year, with the aim of presenting the final draft in May 2025. It will also be exhibited at UNESCO's World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development, Mondiacult, to be hosted by Spain in 2025. The Minister for Culture also reported to the autonomous communities at the session on the preparations for the forum, which will be held in Barcelona from 29 September to 1 October next year.

At Mondiacult 2025, the major event where UNESCO's 194 member states together define the global agenda for culture, the first global report on the state of culture, the fruit of three years' work, is due to be presented. The aim of the Ministry of Culture is to give substance to a specific Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for culture. In this regard, and as the Basque Country proposed at the Sectoral Conference on Culture, "it should include a look at multilingualism, which is essential for a plural country like Spain", in the words of Urtasun. This edition will continue with all the topics covered in the previous edition, held in Mexico in 2022, focusing on three main themes: cultural rights, culture and artificial intelligence and, in view of the geopolitical context, the culture of peace.

Urtasun explained that in the preparation phase, a series of informal official actions and consultations will be carried out throughout the year, both in Spain and internationally. In this regard, UNESCO has launched an online survey to assess the follow-up of the Mondiacult themes and to gather collective feedback.

The Minister for Culture also announced that in the days prior to the conference and as a prelude, the Ministry of Culture will organise, likewise in Barcelona, the eleventh edition of the Culture and Citizenship Meeting, an annual and itinerant forum for reflection and debate, research, visibility and promotion of projects, which aims to promote citizen participation in culture, as well as cultural policies and practices in line with cultural rights throughout the territory.

In this edition, the themes of the meeting will be aligned with those of Mondiacult 2025: cultural rights, culture of peace and artificial intelligence. These thematic lines will be developed and activated in Culture and Citizenship through the participation and involvement of the cultural, artistic and creative sectors from all over the country and civil society. In the words of the minister, "our aim is for this meeting to become a major forum for debate among citizens and the sector that functions as a complementary forum to the UNESCO ministerial summit. We want this to be a meeting in which we also want to involve the autonomous communities".

Purchase of books for public libraries

Another of the meeting's important initiatives was the proposal to set up a temporary working group to share experiences on book purchases for public libraries. The first objective of the initiative is to analyse the current public tendering procedures for procuring books by public libraries to identify the barriers faced by local bookshops and the implications of the application of the Public Procurement Act. The second is to explore legal and technical ways of improving these procedures, enabling libraries to make purchases from local bookshops without infringing current regulations, while ensuring respect for the principles of transparency, free competition and efficiency that govern public procurement.

Also discussed was the draft agreement for the provision of the service of access and consultation of the digital collections held by the Biblioteca Nacional de España for research purposes from the legal deposit conservation centres of the autonomous communities, with the aim of regularising it and extending it to all centres of this type distributed throughout the country.

Non official translation