The Power of Culture

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to end the taboo on the inclusion of religion in the field of development cooperation. In a first step towards achieving this goal, the Ministry has set up a Religion and Development Policy Knowledge Forum. The AIV, the Advisory Council on International Affairs, has researched this subject and come forward with recommendations.

The CAURI project in Marseille and Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) is bringing French and African musicians together, in order to collaborate in the fields of modern and electronic music and in new trends in the urban environment.

The French artists’ collective Du Zieu dans les Bleus will conduct workshops in the summer of 2004 under the name ATELIER #3 in the Baddawi Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

Experts from fifty countries met in Amsterdam in March 2004 for the conference Cairo and Beyond - Reproductive Rights and Culture. Special focus was placed on the power of culture.

A new film festival is born: at the end of March some seventy Asian films will be shown in Amsterdam, divided over thirty programmes.