Charter for Cultural Rights
Community can be place-based, defined by the geographical space people live in; and it can be identitybased, spread across different geographical areas, encompassing groups of people such as Travellers, migrants, people with disabilities, women, older people, young people, and LGBT people. In this regard there are individual and group experiences of exclusion that criss-cross domains and intensify the loss of rights. Community can also be interest based where people assemble around an idea or theme of concern e.g. child poverty, exclusion, etc.
Cultural heritage, for UNESCO, involves the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills, as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith, that communities, groups and in some cases individuals recognise as part of their cultural heritage. It is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity.
Cultural expressions are those expressions that result from the creativity of individuals, groups and societies and that have cultural content. Cultural content refers to the symbolic meaning, artistic dimension, and cultural values that originate from or express cultural identities.
We have power to put Community Culture into action for the cultural rights of people and place. 1. Community is Culture. Culture scrolls us backwards to connect to the inhabitants of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth and fast forwards us to the future creativity of the new Irish. Although a core part of society, culture is like an iceberg moving in ways that are unseen and unheard in and through community. 2. Culture needs Community. Community is a place of meaning-making, out of which objects, artefacts and cultural spaces as broad and diverse as the hearth, the knitted sweater and the YouTube video emerge. 3. Community + Culture = Politics. Culture gives expression to the invisible dimensions; the unheard voice; and the silent contradictions. It prevents the drift to passivity and consumerism and all the democratic deficits this engenders. 4. Community + Culture = Transformation. Many community activists and artists are at the forefront of creative work nested in initiatives seeking equality and human rights. This offers the power to feel and transform one’s self in relation to others, to renew and reframe institutions, and to shape and reshape the value base of our society. Transformation requires agency and an institutional ecology based on the common-good.
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Charter for Cultural Rights Community + Culture = Civil Society. A shift beyond the dominant models of arts provision is urgent. This shift must involve civil society, a civil society resourced and ready to take up new formations and innovations. 6. Community + Culture = Equality. Communities need to enjoy an equality of status and recognition of their culture. They are producers and consumers of culture, and need access to publicly subsidised funding for their cultural expression. Their cultural rights must be recognised, fulfilled and given parity of esteem. 7. Community + Culture = Place. Communities are connected by place and identity and identification with place. Environment, landscape, nature, and materials underpin community and culture, and change. This connectedness is based on a renewed sense of mutuality and environmental stewardship. By signing up to the Community+Culture statement we share a joint commitment to develop local practice sites and indicative actions to make this Charter real.