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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