Colombia: Gender-focused cultural policy monitoring workshop
A national training workshop will be held in Bogota, Colombia, from 16-18 of October 2019. The workshop aims to strengthen capacities on cultural policy monitoring as part of the UNESCO project Reshaping Cultural Policies for the Promotion of Fundamental Freedoms and the Diversity of Cultural Expressions funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).
The three-day training will focus specifically on the elaboration of Colombia’s quadrennial periodic report on the implementation of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Part of the workshop will be dedicated to discuss the state of gender equality in the audio-visual and publishing industries. Participants will be introduced to methodologies of gender-disaggregated data collection. Colombia’s first periodic report (QPR) was submitted in 2017 and demonstrated the country’s commitment to creative industries as an enabler of sustainable development. Notably, the report presented the Social Laboratories of Culture and Entrepreneurship (LASO), a programme intended to encourage and support the creation and consolidation of collaborative networks by young people for the creation, production and commercialization of cultural content using new technologies.
In recent years, Colombia has launched its Orange Economy policy, which aims to strengthen the culture and creative industries and prioritizes culture on the political agenda. Given this momentum for arts and culture, it is an opportune time for Colombia to monitor and evaluate its cultural policies, capture best practices and challenges on the ground, and share the wealth of knowledge and findings in the country’s second QPR.
Eduardo Saravia, member of the UNESCO Expert Facility, will facilitate the national training workshop in Colombia. The workshop will gather cultural professionals, statisticians, ministerial representatives and civil society actors. In addition to a specific focus on gender, which will lead to a separate study on gender in the audio-visual and publishing sectors, a special attention will be paid to culture and creativities in the digital environment.
