 three third plenary session and our third theme, which is culture and participation. And I want you can ask if I can. David Levin loved to kick us off this morning. David is the, works for the Mark Morris dance group and was the is the programme director on the foundation teacher of the Groups programme for Parkinson disease, which is now use as a model in I think 125 communities in 16 countries. David if I could ask you to come forward and address the plenary. Thank you. Good morning everybody. My sincerest thanks to the Presiding Officer, distinguished guests, Sir Jonathan Mills for the invitation, and the incredible team that has organized our three days together. I know it's early, but I actually wanted to start out with a little bit of movement to get us going, so don't worry, you can stay exactly where you are. What I want us to do is actually get into the mind of a dancer, so we're going to start out with just some basic movement and then talk a little bit about how dancers think about movement a bit differently than regular folks. So you just take your hands to one side of your table and you can just reach them down four times to one side. Good for us anyway, and same on the other side. Two, three, four, and the first side again. One, two, three. Very nice everybody. Excellent. Other side. Good. Brilliant. And now, same thing, but just a little opening of your hands to either side. Opening and opening. Good. Nice long fingers. Think about all that blood you're getting circulating. Excellent. Looks great from here. I hope you can all see it. And now reaching up as high as you can, stretching your arms, stretching out, stretching out, stretching out. All right. Good. So that's our basic movement. Now what if I said at the beginning of that that you're imagining that you're putting your hands into water that's a little bit too hot? So there's a little bit of a retreat. Try that. So here, a little hot and you pull it back. What if I said that instead of just opening your hands, you're actually receiving a gift from somebody. It's a gift that you've been waiting for for 40 years and suddenly it's there and you bring it back to you. So hot water, hot water, gift, and bring it back to your heart. Hot water, hot water, gift, bring it back. Ah, that changes things. And what if we said that instead of just stretching, we're actually in a gigantic opera house and you're looking to the top balcony and all of your fans are up there and then you look at the middle balcony and then you look at the mezzanine and the orchestra and you reach up to all of them and you bow. And what if we try that with a little bit of rhythm and we went like this. One and two, open three, bring it back and one and two and open bring it back. Balcony high and middle and a little lower and a little lower reaching up, circle and bow. Wow. You're all hired. Now, what if we actually tried that with a little bit of music? One more time. Excellent work. So we started off with some plain old movement, a little bit of stretching, and we turned it into a dance phrase. And what if I told you at the end that this is actually from a piece by the acclaimed choreographer Mark Morris, a piece called Falling Down Stairs, which was commissioned as part of a project done with Yo-Yo Ma. And so you've now learned a little bit of Mark Morris choreography to start your day. A colleague and I started leading dance classes for people with Parkinson's while I was still a full-time dancer with the Mark Morris dance group. In between rehearsals and performances, including several tours that brought us through the Edinburgh Festival Theatre, we found time to meet with a small group of people with Parkinson's at our dance center in Brooklyn, New York. Now, this was quite radical at the time. People with Parkinson's in a dance studio rather than a clinic, a hospital, or a nursing home. Also radical was the fact that we facilitated a real legitimate dance class based on technique, Mark Morris Repertory, like what you just learned, and creative improvisation. We emphasized aesthetics over function, imagination over mechanics, as you just did, and creative artistry over repetition. We didn't mention symptoms, and we didn't use the word therapy. We were not trying to cure anyone of anything. We simply tried to share our skills and knowledge with others who could use them, and in doing so improve the quality of life for every individual in our class. To be honest, at the beginning, we had no idea what we were doing, but we established three guiding principles. Maybe it's better to describe them as hunches. Number one, a dance program represents a welcome antithesis to the medicalization that so often happens to people living with a chronic disease of aging. In Parkinson's in particular, slowness, rigidity, tremor, and balance issues result in people forever seeing themselves as patients. Dance class is a place where people could re-identify as dancers, as lifelong learners, as artists. This is a place where people are encouraged to ask, not what's the matter with me, but what matters to me. Two, the things that dance artists focus on in their training, the things that you all just focused on, imagery, rhythm, coordination, expressivity, balance, fluidity, social connection, these are the very things that people with Parkinson's need to address to manage their disease progression with dignity. The strategies that dancers spend their years perfecting can seamlessly and pleasurably be repurposed to help people with Parkinson's learn to move better, express themselves, and manage their lives through confidence, creativity, and skill rather than relying on the medical system alone. Three, the sense of community created by the act of coming together to dance is as important as the actual movement that we do. By participating in the process of making art together, our Parkinson's dancers have a better chance of offsetting the isolation and depression that are so prevalent in this population. And so, the dance for PD program has grown from eight students a month to 50 students a week in our Brooklyn studios, from one location in New York to seven, from five teachers who initially trained with us in 2007 to import the program back to their own communities to more than 400 teachers in 16 communities, 16 countries around the world. And as it's grown, our initial hunches, those guiding principles, have become supported by cold hard scientific evidence and warm soft life affirming anecdotal narratives. We've learned a couple things, one that people view the program as a lifeline, that they feel more confident that their self-efficacy increases, that they're able to perform at least one activity of daily living with more ease, that they integrate music and rhythm as critical tools as they move around the city, that they are more joyful and in control despite the challenges they face, that their walking improves. One participant says, when I'm in dance class, I don't have Parkinson's. Another one, quote, the music and movement started, I was filled with great joy. I was able to take the whole class and walk out feeling accomplished. I saw endless possibilities for myself and my favorite, it's Carnegie Hall compared to Bellevue Hospital. People return week after week to experience the joys of dancing together, of belonging, of feeling that they can contribute to an artistic cultural community of people like them regardless of their level of ability or mobility. And they are welcomed as valuable members of first, the artistic community of the Mark Morris Dance Center, second, the network of dance for Parkinson's groups around the world, and third, the broader field of performing arts. Whereas other areas of their lives too often reinforce feelings of limitation and exclusion, participation in the dance for PD program re-inscribes a sense of possibility, self-worth, even hope in the face of degenerative illness. After all, Parkinson's isn't just a movement disorder, it's a quality of life disorder. That's why dance fits Parkinson's like a glove. Dance is of course a physical form, but the experience of dancing also addresses the cognitive, emotional, and social issues specific to Parkinson's and the aging process. Like many diseases typically associated with aging, Parkinson's is, as filmmaker and advocate David Iverson says, a disease of subtraction. So it becomes critical to change the equation into one of addition. Dance and all of the arts are all about addition. Here's what I want you to take away today. The intimate collaboration between dance artists and people with Parkinson's and more broadly between dance organizations and medical organizations or social service organizations represents a robust, successful model for how all of us, all of us in the cultural sector, can leverage existing resources in our communities to address significant social and healthcare challenges. And when it's done right, at least four constituencies are served. The first, community members. It's clear that participants in our class learn strategies, think creatively, reassess their self-worth, and enter into a communal state of belonging, that vital sense of connection that Jude Kelly articulated so compellingly yesterday. But it's equally true that the program encourages dancers who often fail to understand how their skills can provide value beyond the stage to embrace the fact that what they already know, practice, and love can be of enormous life-changing benefit to members of their communities. Third, dance companies and arts presenters, who traditionally focus a lot of their education work on programs for young people, are waking up to the reality that there's an audience of older adults who aren't content to simply buy tickets and sit in theatres, but prefer to participate, stay active, and even perform themselves. Finally, scientists are starting to investigate the process by which dancers train and people with Parkinson's are able to find fluidity, social connection, and rhythm through dancing. Through the Dance for Parkinson's system, scientists have a new window through which to research motor learning, motor control, and the workings of the brain. The tide is slowly starting to turn. When we started 15 years ago, doctors wouldn't give us the time of day. I love your program, but dance sounds frivolous, when neurologist actually told me. Even if it works, I couldn't possibly recommend a dance class to my patients. 15 years later, more than 70% of the students in our New York program come to us through physician referrals. Maybe it's the abundance of personal accounts or the solid research that's now being done. Maybe it's the realization that with the growing prevalence of Parkinson's and the projection that by 2050, 22% of our global population will be over 60, that's double what it is now, we need solutions and answers that fall outside of healthcare and inside the cultural sector. And here's the most exciting thing about all of this. The human resources needed to launch life-changing dance programs for older people and people with Parkinson's, MS, and dementia, they've already been created. The infrastructure to use Professor Power's term is already in place. Look around your community, look around your cities, look around your country, and you'll see dancers who are ready, willing, and able to serve, to share their expertise with members of their communities who, though they might not yet know it, are ready to come and see dance as a lifeline. Yes, dancers have to be paid, and partnerships have to be formed, and venues have to be found. But my message is not foremost about money or funding. It's about leveraging the potential of artists who are already among us, who are already here, to deliver participatory activities that help all of us, Parkinsonian or not, maintain quality of life and physical ability well into our later years. Dancers are here, we are ready, and we want to contribute. There's a saying in the disability community, nothing about us without us. And so in that spirit, I'm going to introduce you to Cindy Gilbertson, who will conclude this session. Thank you. I've learned to value myself more. Which is quite a gift. When I'm slumping, I say to myself, I'm a dancer. I have to sit down straight. I am a dancer. And it gives me motivation to take better care of myself. When the medicine is working, I can almost do everything. It's just that the amounts of time they're getting shorter and shorter when it functions. Parkinson's forces you to reveal your vulnerabilities. You know, otherwise people mostly try to put on your best face, their best appearance. You know, I'm going out in public, I have to put this and that, and I have to put my overcoat button it up tight. Well, you can't, if you're going with Parkinson's and you can't button it, you're revealed. You know, there's no way about it. What happens to me? When my feet feel like blue and they're stuck on the floor, I sometimes cannot walk, but I can dance. If I, I can, I know I can give you an example. Shall I start? Yep. Well, for example, right now I'm off. You can see my hand is shaking and I have to tremor. If I try to walk, I have a great deal of difficulty. I can walk a little bit, but if I pretend I'm dancing, I can do it. And I don't have any problems. Music leads. In other words, it's not my brain telling me to take a step or to do this or do that. The music is leading me. So I'm like following this wonderful leader who's so mysterious and has such a lovely sound and it's going to take me to some other place. What is that other place? It's a place where you're weightless. You know, you just, your body is just, just flies. It doesn't tug at you. Tug you and pull you and push you and you know, have you, and these knots where you can't move and you can't think and you're struggling and fighting and just, you know, you go above that. An excerpt from a film called Capturing Grace by David Iverson. It's been a great pleasure to, and an honor to speak with you this morning. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, David. That was not just uplifting. I have to say it was a great way to start on Friday morning. I'm now going to, I'll try it on my MSP colleagues when the Parliament resumes. An ex-speaker is Matthew Peacock from Streetwise Opera. Founded in 2002, Streetwise Opera is a charity that uses music to help people who have experienced homelessness make positive change in their lives. Matthew. Thank you. Presiding officer, ladies and gentlemen, it's a real honour to be here. Thank you, Jonathan, for the invitation and thank you, David, for that beautiful presentation and your beautiful work. I'm particularly thrilled to be back in Edinburgh where I was a student and this place holds a very special place in my heart and always will. In the year 2000, I was a support worker in a night shelter for homeless people in London. One night after dinner, a resident read out a quote in the newspaper from a politician who said that the homeless are the people you step over coming out of the opera house. The homeless people there that night didn't just want soup and blankets. They wanted dignity and respect. They said that if they were in an opera, it would show a different side of homelessness. Together, we got hold of the opera house for two days and put on a show and that developed into Streetwise Opera. We now run regular music activities across five regions in England, embedded both in homeless centres and in large arts institutions like Sage Gateshead and the Southbank Centre. We stage operas starring performance of experienced homelessness and provide progression activities, volunteering and work experience in the arts for homeless people. We've expanded internationally and last month launched with One Voice, a global arts and homelessness network aiming to bring together projects of all kinds to share practice and policy. With One Voice was launched at the Cultural Olympiad in Rio, where we have been working for three years with the City Council, Homeless People's Movement, arts organisations, British Council, the Church, NGOs, to nurture new projects and build the first arts and homelessness sector locally. During the Cultural Olympiad, we brought delegates from all over the world to create an occupation of arts and people of the streets, a festival that homeless people themselves had designed to give visibility and dignity to Rio's street population. Back in the UK in March this year, we had our first production televised on the BBC. It was a new opera based on Bach's and Matthew Passion in co-production with The 16, one of the world's greatest choirs. It featured a newly commissioned chorus created by our performers working with Sir James McMillan, Scotland's most celebrated composer. Here is a short documentary to show you what happened. This is the biggest production we have done in our 15-year history. It's ambitious on many levels. It's a piece which is musically quite challenging and we have given all of the main solo roles to the street wise performers. Though it's some opera. This is an abbreviated version of the very beautiful Bach's and Matthew Passion. So it's a bit shorter and it has a beautiful finale that was written especially for us by James McMillan and it's performed by Street Wise Opera and The 16 who are a wonderful early music choir. One, two, three, four. The St Matthew Passion project, we're all really really excited about it. Tonight we've been doing the resurrection chorus where we actually had a part in doing the words of it and we had the composer James McMillan teaching us it so that was amazingly exciting. It's so exciting. 12 bulydd y goll, you wouldn't have got me in here for two minutes. Now I'm in here and you can't shut me up. It's helped me to get back to me family that I've not seen for nearly five years and I'm born down to Liverpool this weekend to see me daughters. It loved it, it was fantastic. I can't say much more. Everybody just done fantastic. This motion, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. How did you feel? Perfect, excited, fire. When Street Wise Opera started 15 years ago it was immediately clear that this wasn't simply an exercise in changing public attitudes towards homelessness. It is fulfilling some significant unmet needs. Homelessness isn't just about housing. People have experienced homelessness face many other challenges across mental and physical health. Well-being measures for the homeless population are three times lower than the national average in England. Homeless people's life expectancy is 47 and homeless people are nine times more likely to kill themselves. Homeless people also face chronic isolation and even after being rehoused often suffer from loneliness which results in 25% going back onto the streets. So we at Street Wise and many other similar arts and homelessness organisations focus on using the arts as a tool to improve well-being and social inclusion to build people's well-being and to build a bridge for people back into mainstream society. Last year 97% of our performers demonstrated increases in mental and physical well-being. 84% trying new activities in the community outside Street Wise while 83% reported improved relationships with those around them. Examples like Danny in the film, re-establishing contact with his daughters or a performer from Newcastle who was so proud of himself that he made contact with his family for the first time in over a decade and his six-year-old granddaughter who he had never met before came to see him in the show. The choir member in Rio who said that after the cultural Olympiad the police are treating him differently and moving him on less. The heroin addict who said that being in Street Wise opera had helped him look his children in the eye for the first time in 25 years. He is now a senior drug support worker and behind these stats and stories the reason why it is working is profound sometimes hard to measure but always often the most important bit of all. I believe that across society arts gives people pride and dignity the permission to believe in themselves an opportunity to be defined by their achievements not their needs and crucially a new identity. We all know how important it is to feel like you have an identity and a purpose. Often people's first question is what do you do? Many Street Wise performers tell us how transformational is to say I'm a Street Wise opera performer. There are 60 incredible arts and homeless projects across the UK and our first global mapping exercise through With One Voice shows around 250 arts and homelessness projects worldwide. The great challenge the great opportunity for this work is that these projects don't remain in an isolated bubble but become mainstreamed into social welfare. In homelessness we talk about a jigsaw of support where the jigsaw is made up of pieces that contribute to the whole picture of support healthcare, housing, education. The arts needs to be seen as a piece of this jigsaw of equal importance. My dream and my plea for you to take back to your countries and your work is for policy makers of different departments and homeless people to sit around the same table and look at the issue of homelessness in a holistic way asking how can the arts contribute? It happens sometimes but not enough and as Michael so eloquently put it yesterday the arts can contribute to all sectors. And I want to say to the whole youth delegation please hold on to the incredible passion we have seen carry on being ambitious and dream big and please remember that impossible is often only a matter of perspective. Art and creativity is part of everyone. It is not a luxury or a budget line but a resource and a human right. We can help solve social issues so help us work together cross department cross party cross continent to help change the lives of more people for the better. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Matthew, our next speaker is Jay Wang who is the director of the Center on Public Diplomacy University of Southern California and also professor for the UCLA Annenberg School of Education of Communication and Journalism. Jay, thank you. Thank you, Presiding Officer. And good morning everyone. It's a great honour to be here and we are very delighted to be a knowledge partner of this year's cultural summit and on behalf of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy I would like to congratulate Jonathan Mills and its Foundation for hosting this very timely discussion on the enduring and transformative role culture plays in society. So as an academic institution so I'm not going to be here dancing and singing to you but I wanted to know that this partnership is very important for us. It's important for us because it is part of our initiative to bridge the study and practice gap. The Center on Public Diplomacy was established at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 2003. Over the past decade we have built a robust platform for public diplomacy scholars and practitioners from around the world through a broad portfolio of activities and programs to foster scholarship and research and to provide professional education and training and to help our practitioners to build capacity for public diplomacy work. And we have also noticed a growing interest in the academic world in studying and researching public diplomacy as we have seen there is a growing representation of scholarly work in academic outlets. And we are very proud as a center to play a very important role to help build a field of public diplomacy into a strong and sustainable facet of international affairs. Half a century ago, distinguished American diplomat Edmund Gulline defined the term public diplomacy to specifically denote coordinated governmental efforts with foreign publics. The concept of public diplomacy obviously has since broadened and is now far more expensive. It is no longer an activity unique to sovereign states. The public dimension of diplomacy now involves a multitude of actors and networks. Indeed, as a mindset and a skill set, public diplomacy is needed not only in governments but also in businesses and civil society as we enter a phase of a far more fluid distributed international system. Without getting into this wilderness of academic definition about what public diplomacy is, let's just say that the two pillars of public diplomacy work are policy advocacy and a cultural diplomacy in nation-to-nation relations. Now creating productive international relationships rests on some form of sustained understanding and some level of trust between nations and peoples. Trust is invariably a function of risk and risk perception is heightened in times of great uncertainty. Many speakers at this summit have spoken eloquently and passionately about culture and the arts having a vital role to play, especially in these times that we feel stressed politically, economically and environmentally. So what is the fate of culture relations and artistic exchanges in this age of anxiety as we experience massive movement of trade, people and ideas? Can culture really hold together, hold us together in a fracturing world? Now we're standing its tremendous benefits over the last two decades. Globalisation has sharpened political and economic divides high in the economic insecurity and cultural anxiety among many people. Of course the movement of goods information and people is nothing new. What is new is the speed, scope and scale of such movements in contemporary times. Some of us are clearly exhausted by these changes as we transit from a primarily monocultural existence to an increasingly polycetric environment. There's also not only disconnect between the elites and the general public, but also division among elites about the nature and the merits of trade, migration and flow of ideas and ideologies. It is now clear that the rise of assertive nationalism and nativism, as we have seen in many parts of the world in recent times, is due in large part to the negative fallout of globalisation. Now adding to these destabilising shifts is a crowded, fractured and a transparent information environment and that environment has become a part of our daily existence. Popular emotion and public opinion now exert much greater constraints on policies and state actions. The information cacophony with plenty of misinformation and disinformation has exacerbated digital credulity and digital distrust. To make matters worse, some of the political rhetoric and its excesses are deepening public's existential fear. As we navigate an increasingly volatile world and international order under great stress, we should also be very clear-eyed about the inevitable limitations of human nature and human imagination. Here I'd like to draw from the writings by the influential American theologian and social commentator in the first part of 20th century Reinhold Niebu. His thesis of moral man and immoral society, which is the title of his book, basically states that while individuals may be moral in terms of considering interests other than their own in determining their outlook and conduct, and on occasion, they may even be altruistic by preferring the advantages of others to their own. These tendencies and behavior are more difficult, if not impossible, for social groups such as nation states. He argued that human groups are generally incapable of seeing and understanding the interests of others as vividly as their own. Therefore, he wrote, for all the centuries of experience, may men have not yet learned how to live together without compounding their vices and covering each other with mud and with blood. This is a rather pessimistic view of human condition, but of course Niebu was not simply resigned to such pessimism. Recognizing our limitations and then there's no escape from social conflicts, he asked, what can be done to save societies from these cycles of conflicts? His answer is straightforward, to reduce them to a minimum by expanding social cooperation. Now, to do that, we need to develop the incentive and the capacity for cooperative behavior, which is fundamentally about expanding the spaces of collective empathy. Now, the contemporary movements of trade people and ideas bring tensions into our physical as well as our imagined spaces. Cultural contacts can be harmonious, mixing and mingling, and they can also be contentious and sometimes even violent. After all, our tastes and sensibilities across national lines and cultural lines are varied and can be clashing. Nevertheless, these encounters should be, to quote the late journalist Christopher Hitchens, these encounters should be clashes about, not of civilisations. Cultural relations and sometimes these clashes provide the opportunity for us to open up vistas of experiences and to negotiate differences and adjust and accommodate each other's priorities. The question then becomes, does culture artistic exchange as part of the broader public diplomacy enterprise make us better communities and make us better citizens? Or is the world of cultural exchange like a swarm of busy ants carrying grains of sand back and forth without accomplishing anything truly significant? Now, this is both a normative and empirical question. In the examples, the beautiful presentation we just heard, music and dance embody the two most elemental form of human interaction or human communication. The use of voice, the use of body. Now, some view the art as the consummate communication form that helps to expand spaces of expression and empathy. For us at CPD, this is an empirical question. We have just started to undertake a study to better capture and understand the value of cultural exchanges to local communities in the United States. We are looking into the extent to which hosting cultural exchanges actually enhances local communities, culture, social and civic capital which we assume as resources are crucial for the preservation and the vibrancy of our local communities. And we approach this as a comparative analysis as we believe it is far more fruitful and instructive to look at the so-called the relative impact as opposed to absolute ones. Given the current disruptive technologies and the nature of globalization, building new skills and capabilities are needed for organizations of cultural relations. To that end, we are developing professional education modules in storytelling and creating social stories for instance to help enable practitioners to expand the boundaries and to experiment and innovate their practices. I recently came across a media profile of a German chef who has achieved celebrity status in Italy as a creator and innovator of Italian national cuisine. A common attention when he was quoted saying here's a quote one needs to understand what it means to be a foreigner in order to make a difference in the world. And I thought about this. It doesn't make sense, right? So there's no question that we now have more opportunities than ever to see and experience the world as a foreigner, as an outsider. At the same time it is also true that we also are looking for relief in the face of mountain cultural anxiety as somebody being visited upon and as an insider. And we hope culture and the arts are a moderating force to help release some of these tensions to provide us with the cultural generosity to better identify with the other. So for all that as a pessimistic optimist I'm convinced that there are the possibilities and prospects of public diplomacy and a cultural diplomacy as a preferred non-mitatory means to advance peace and prosperity. And culture occupies a central role in global affairs. And the challenge for us is to figure out how can we make efforts and steps to ensure that these cultural relations and the artistic exchanges that are truly meaningfully delivering the kind of impact in the results at our local communities that help us to expand our spaces of cooperation. So thank you very much. Thank you very much Jay. And I'd now like to call the first of our ministerial delegates the Honourable Maggie Barry O.N.Z.M. For many years Maggie was one of New Zealand's best known radio, television, broadcasters and she now serves as the Minister for the Arts Culture and Heritage in New Zealand. I'd like to ask Maggie to come and join us at the podium. Thank you. Tena koutou. Tena tato katoa. In the words of New Zealand's ethnic people, the Māori people, our tangata fenua, greetings to you all. You important people from all around the world to this place. I welcome you all three times. It has been an extraordinary few days I must say and it is a privilege Jonathan and thank you for putting together such a stimulating program and one as well that really allows us to explore the options about participation and motivation. From my point of view I hold three portfolios that I think are relevant to some of the themes that we've been exploring. So I am the Minister for Seniors although not quite yet one myself. I am the Minister for Conservation and I am also the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage. And to me these three portfolios all fit a very similar theme. They are about exploring our nationhood about who we are. New Zealanders define ourselves through our natural flora and fauna. Our kiwi, our flightless birds are unique. They are ours and we are called kiwis actually. That's how much we identify with this small flightless bird. I'm not sure really what that says about us but we are different from other people because we tell our stories in different ways. We have our tangata fenua closely involved with the fabric of our society and we are proudly different in the way we sing, we dance, we perform, we do our visual arts. These are the things that make us different from you all and on the world stage it is important for us to have that national identity. We are a changing society and we have a number of quirky elements that we're working on. I thought I might share a little bit of them with you but because I'm Minister of Conservation I pay attention to nature and to the balance of nature and at the heart of any thriving environment is a healthy ecology and I believe that the same applies to the arts and culture ecosystems. They too have an ecology that operates in much the same way as nature does. So for the arts sector to thrive there needs to be a genuine interconnection and relationship between the key elements in their environments. There's a mutual dependency on the ecosystem for those various elements to survive and be healthy and functioning well they all need each other. Help nurture one element and all the others will benefit and be stronger. Take away some vital ingredient and it might all collapse because of that interdependency. For a sustainable environment there needs to be collaboration and strong partnerships. That isn't always necessarily found within government and within ministries to be honest. Ministries often work in silos independently of each other sometimes also in competition and it takes determination and focus to encourage these bureaucratic cultures to integrate and to be more seamless and open with each other but it is something that is essential to a healthy ecology and therefore a healthy country. Practicalities are important of course we have to get them right and I'm going to use the F word here funding. It's necessary evil it is an important thing to take note of and address and some of our youth representatives yesterday in a session talked about our preoccupation with numbers and that that was somehow an unsavory thing smiling happily there Emma isn't it. It was a good point and it's one that we need to think about. We can't lose sight of the heart and soul of what we're doing but unless we have the numbers and if we don't get them right it's at our peril and all else will falter. So it is important to use leverage another word I've heard quite a few times at this summit maximising the crown funding making the tax payers dollars go further and to be matched so that we have public private partnerships and we are open to those. These are the things that we need to be imaginative and creative about and we have to get those fundamentals right. For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of visiting us in Aotearoa New Zealanders or Kiwis as we called ourselves are very justifiably proud of our native and indigenous cultures. You may be familiar with them with Kapahaka the warlike dance that happens before the all black games or you might have seen the Edinburgh tattoo which has had Maori culture groups performing. There's a similarity and energy and passion with those groups. It is very important to us but we are a changing society and it's happening quite rapidly more rapidly than some people are ready for. With 39% of its population born overseas our largest city Auckland is now more ethnically diverse than Sydney, Los Angeles, London or even New York. Auckland has over 200 ethnicities speaking over 160 languages. So engaging people with accessible arts, culture, history and heritage helps create strong and resilient communities and knits together all of those different cultures in a way that's meaningful to the people who live there. One very clear example is the role that cultural participation continues to play in the recovery from the earthquakes that devastated Christchurch. They started in 2010 they continue on to this day. We're known as the shaky aisles and we feel a particular sadness and affinity with the tragic events of Italy this week. But in Christchurch when the first earthquakes occurred once people's basic needs were met they told us what they most wanted were places to meet either face to face or online to share their stories and to experience events and activities that would lift their spirits whether that was perhaps to dance on a makeshift dance-o-mat or access an open air pavilion for music and films or even a temporary bowling green on an abandoned building site. People needed to get together they needed the arts and the culture to nurture them and in a place that was important to them that needed to heal and the arts were a huge part of that. We found that though for some time after the earthquakes people were very reluctant to go into the traditional venues theatres, cinemas so the Christchurch arts sector took it to the streets and they had pop-up theatre outdoor activities and events in public spaces that were far more inclusive than they used to be traditionally and it worked terrifically well. We must never lose sight of the fact that the arts are a powerful source of strength and fulfilment surveyed by our arts organisation Creative New Zealand found 88% of participants agreed that the arts are good for you but not perhaps in the way that Spinach and Broccoli are good for you a society that speaks and thinks imaginatively and creatively is a society that can be innovative and adaptable socially, environmentally and economically. So let's accept and in this audience I'd be surprised if anyone argued that arts and culture are vehicles for progress they create vibrant towns and cities draw cards for businesses and for tourists jobs are created diplomatic and trade relationships in New Zealand for the first time last year tourism overtook Darien as our greatest earner and that's a phenomenal shift a lot of people came to New Zealand to see our landscapes and to see our culture and find out what was different about us nearly three quarters actually of international visitors say that they come to New Zealand to experience our natural environment so we've developed a program to get people out into the outdoors and to explore New Zealand's national parks our coastlines our inner city green spaces we've called it healthy nature healthy people and it actively encourages people to go out onto the conservation estates and enjoy the physical and the mental health benefits of contact with nature some of our partners include the mental health foundation and the ministry for health research has estimated a health saving for every kilometer walked $2.70 is saved from the health budget and $1.30 for every kilometer cycled it's quite good to be able to measure the numbers sometimes and get that tangible evidence so that we can prize money out of our wealthier ministries and health is right in behind us I'm sure if we put a value on participation in the arts and culture it would be as significant access is important but it also comes with its challenges one in five New Zealanders has a disability and access aotearoa facilitates arts for all which are networks around the country to help ensure that access is not left to chance these networks encourage and incentivise performing arts companies galleries museums and all venues to include sign interpreted performances and tours as well as audio descriptions for people who are blind or partially sighted and workshops and relaxed performances for people with intellectual disabilities an example is a bilingual show for deaf and hearing audiences at the end of my hands and that plays to sell out audience and it bridges the gap between people who are normal and people who have disabilities and makes them the same in a way that is meaningful as the minister for seniors my focus is on ensuring that New Zealanders with our ageing population continue to be healthy and active and connected as they age often ageing as seen as somehow as a cost to society my ambition is to challenge that attitude we will all live longer and at home our over 65 population will double within 25 within the next two years 20 years sorry and dementia rates will treble and those are problems that we need to be able to plan for if we're going to deal with the challenges properly because we don't want to just live longer we want to lead meaningful lives and we want to be able to enjoy ourselves and I loved David Leventhal and the Mark Morris Dance for PD tremendous a wonderful thing I don't know if you know what we have at home the hip hop operation we have a group of dance performers who are all in their 80s in fact some are in their 90s half a dozen of them have dementia most of them need medication Zimmer frames quite a lot of assistance actually to live their daily lives but as we saw with your example David when people put aside their pains and aches and get to the music and to the rhythm of what they're doing they really thrive and achieve things that they didn't think that they were capable of and because it's done to hip hop I mean we're talking about you know people in their 90s who actually have green hair and chains and bling and a bad boy attitude actually and they stand up there and they shake their booty and they do tremendously well I probably should have broken the rules Jonathan bought a clip along with me any event I have ever been to with the hip hop operation troops it brings the house down they are remarkable people and they remember actually even through the dementia the music touches them in a way that makes them move and makes them no longer in that state where they can't remember their past and their future and they do what is the most valuable thing of all and what we all should do which is to live in the moment so combining dance and resonating with people shared memories is something that works very well and our hip hop operation people actually did very well in Las Vegas with those people doing hip hop they were awarded and had worldwide acclaim and they love every moment of that I could talk for a long time about these things but I know that there are others but I would say this and with the opera too I acknowledge that and I think with homeless people and any self-esteem issues and elements of being on the outside to bring people in and to incorporate them as part of society in a way that involves culture and music and art is the most powerful way to do it I believe we have a saying in New Zealand Aotearoa we are the land of the long white cloud what is the most important thing it is hei tangata hei tangata hei tangata the people the people the people thank you thank you minister Maggie Barry we will now hear from Mr Azad Duzumann Noor from Bangladesh and Mr Noor is an actor a writer a director who has been involved in hundreds of stage radio and television and film productions over many years and is now the minister for culture for Bangladesh Mr Noor thank you very much the honourable presiding officer excellencies distinguished guests friends a very good morning to you Bangladesh and its culture has always been defined by its power to ensure participation and it is through the people's participation that our culture has endured the culture of our fertile lands has evolved through the ages and our folk music village theatre terracotta art and many more are testament to the richness of our heritage none of this would be possible without the participation of the every day people of Bengal it is not only the local artisans musicians and theatre troops who make our culture India but the grandmothers who tell our folk tales the boatmen who sing songs of the river and the bowls who travel across the countryside and sing about the love for all creatures all of these countless contributors come together to make the culture of Bangladesh what it is today in more recent years the huge crowds to gather at our music festivals book fairs and new year celebrations only work as an example of the mass participation in our cultural activities in turn it is their participation that ensures the diversity and durability of our culture long ago I was a regular performer in one of the pioneering theatre groups in the revival of Bangladesh theatre in the early years of our independence in 1971 our group staged translated versions of Bartleback's plays among others which had strong social and political messages the plays become immensely popular in Bangladesh with massive audience support the use of storytelling techniques and songs and direct address to the audience energize them the socialist messages resonated with the audience's expectations of social, economic and political change and we drew immense satisfaction from interacting with them theatre in Bangladesh is a prime example of the important relationship between culture and participation Bangladesh has experimented different varieties of theatre from folk to absent classical to poor we of course have our own traditional theatre forms that predates the arrival of European proscenium theatre in the late 18th century by a thousand years such as Jatra, Pala, Gombeira Akhrae et cetera all of this continue to be an important part of our local folk culture and depends on a close involvement of the audience of their effectiveness theatre has also been used by non-government organization to spread their messages on development issues including education health and nutrition and women's empowerment similarly folk music in Bangladesh is also hugely influenced by audience participation and interaction with the musicians and often draw an important social and cultural issues for inspiration Nakhshikatha a traditional craft of stitching blankets is also wholly dependent on participation since it is traditionally meant to be the stories of the lives of rural women woven into the material through the artisan's workmanship Bangladesh also has a thriving arts industry and many up and coming new artists are not only experimenting with the different styles and inspiring important commentary on various social issues they are also interacting with the art viewers through their work and making audience participation an important focus of their art in recent times participation has again been in focus as newer demands for education and entertainment began to be felt in the wake of emergent problems and conflicts such as an insidious drug culture and religious extremism the spread of culture both of which primarily targets the youth particularly in the case of religious extremism the spread of culture is considered by many educators and psychologists as a potent antidote all over Bangladesh children and youth are being encouraged to engage in cultural activities with persuasive messages about the dangers of extremist beliefs physical disabilities and differently challenging situation such as autism have also been the focus of many new generation works of art besides many social health and other messages are now seen to be more effective if given to children from their early education days and culture is felt to be a means of achieving these ends educators have also started to involve marginalized children in cultural activities such as through strict children theater groups and bring their daily struggles to a wider audience at the Edinburgh International Cultural Summit 2014 the dynamic discussion on the three themes values and measurements citizen culture and advocacy and identity contributed towards the idea of creating a safe platform through culture towards building a more open inclusive and a stable society in Bangladesh following the discussion at the last summit the Bangladesh cultural minister ministry partnered with the British Council in a pioneering project a different Romeo and Juliet performed by Bangladeshi people with disability this groundbreaking theater project which commemorated the 400 years of sex was death was first of his kind in Bangladesh and has opened a new horizon for policymakers and emerging cultural leaders to use arts as a medium to create an inclusive society this unique project also showed the power of culture in the opening dialogue and debate amongst people through this work we have learned the crucial role that culture can play in spreading messages of inclusivity through a wider society and has raised awareness of a bigger challenge in creating accessibility at public and private establishments now that Bangladesh has produced a successful example it is time to mainstream such initiatives to create a sustainable platform for a democratic and pluralistic society this year's theme for the summit which is culture building resilient communities is also very timely in interpreting the vital role of the culture plays in the real life of any successful community the ministry of cultural affairs is now working with the British Council in the project aim to transport aim to transform public libraries across Bangladesh to create community led cultural spaces however well I can strongly claim that must cultural participation still exists in Bangladesh and that culture is a crucial medium for ensuring an inclusive and pluralistic society we cannot deny the disconnect between cultural education and the wider education system of Bangladesh as more and more students are pressurised to achieve top grades and get into good universities cultural activities are beginning to take a back seat in their priorities the constant cycle of school and extra lesson that students are forced to endure lifts them drained at the end of the day and gives them very little room to engage in cultural activities in fact forcing the students to study and in many cases memorize only textbooks can have negative psychological impacts thus making them even more susceptible to developing antisocial tendencies and being exploited for radicalisation we must act at once to stop this constant pressure and wrote memorisation to pass a standardised tests and instead and instead acknowledge the diversity of the needs and the important role of culture in ensuring a holistic education the influence of culture can also play a crucial role in combating terrorism not just in Bangladesh but all over the world by spreading the ideals of pluralism secularism and tolerance our focus should not be on creating a mass of A-plus students but progressive and open-minded citizens of the future it is only by focusing on culture and ensuring participation and diversity at all levels of society through well-rounded education systems ministry activities at local, regional and national levels partnering with local and international cultural organisations and sound cultural policy that we can move towards creating a progressive and enlightened global society thank you very much thank you very much minister Noor now after Michael Gowan's welcome contribution yesterday we're going to end this morning's session with a presentation from three of our young delegates Blair Boyle, Emma Ruse and Daniel McCormick from Utherence Voice I'd ask Blair Daniel and Emma to join us now thank you very much thank you officer ministers ambassadors honours guests and ladies and gentlemen I would first of all like to thank every single person here for I guess incredibly inspiring and motivating incredible three days that I am sure I will personally treasure for many years to come that has been thought provoking and exciting so thank you to Jonathan for inviting us and allowing us to be here and thank you to Fayeig, the director of the GIF programme summit for making us incredible and thank you to everyone here so what is Gouff Arts Voice Scotland? Who are we and what do we do? So we are a group of young people when we were established in 2014 we were established as a national Gouff Arts advisory group for Scotland's first and only national Gouff Arts strategy called Time to Shine Time to Shine is unique in its policy that it places young people at your heart of your decision making process not only locally regionally but also nationally at strategic policy level and we work closely with Young Scot, Creative Scotland and with the Scottish Government themselves so what who are we so we are as I said when we established we were a group of about 15 young people aged from 14 to 22 ranging from the western isles right down to the borders so transcending geographical location and we have three key themes get are actually replicated in the strategy itself which is participation provision and progression and the vision of the Time to Shine strategy has got an 10 year well eight years time from now when we started it was 10 years time Scotland would be and a world leader in Gouff Arts creativity and innovation in Gouff Arts Voice Scotland also has a vision and get all young people in Scotland regardless of who they are where you're from your backgrounds economic situation et cetera et cetera we'll have equal we'll have equal access and opportunity to art and cultural activities so I am now going to pass you over to my peer Emma who's going to talk about some of the more concrete tangible work that we have done but again I would like to thank us all one of the first things we set up when we started in 2014 was the nurturing talent fund the nurturing talent fund is a fund for young people aged 14 to 20 to create their own projects and it was entirely created and led by us with assistance from Creative Scotland we sit on the board to assess the applications and we have given out thousands upon thousands of pounds to young people to create their own projects and have their dreams realised to be honest they do things such as rent out gallery spaces and create EPs and honestly it's really inspiring to see all the work that's going on in Scotland there through Time to Shine we've created with Creative Scotland there are nine youth arts hubs all across Scotland from the Highlands to locations such as Central Edinburgh and through the youth arts hubs and all the Time to Shine projects there have been over 40,000 participants which I'm sure everyone here will agree is an amazing number but as some of you will know if you were in the session I was in yesterday afternoon I don't believe that numbers are everything I don't think we can measure the full impact of Time to Shine I don't think we can put a tangible number on how much this strategy is done for the young people of Scotland not everyone will know its name not everyone will have googled what is this Time to Shine that I'm hearing about but they will have been affected by it in the smallest ways from using the print studio at Out of the Blue which is Edinburgh's arts hub to just walking past posters in the street and thinking oh that looks cool they're still engaging and it's an amazing thing to be able to engage so many young people but I believe I'm preaching to the choir here because everyone in this room believes in the importance of arts and the importance of culture but I'm going to ask a question do we all agree on the importance of young people having seen the response to the youth delegation here today and here for this summit I would say that we're definitely making headway there I look at the people sitting to your left and I see some of the most amazing people some of the most passionate intelligent people and I may be a tad biased thinking of how amazing they are but they are the future and in two years 10 years I think some of these people will be sitting where you all are now and making these important decisions so I'm really honestly grateful that we've all been invited here to show you what the youth of Scotland can do personally and what the youth of every country can do so I would invite you after this summit to connect with your young people because I think through time to shine in Youth Else Voice Scotland we at least with the help of this summit have shown what Scotland's young people can do and it's the same all across the world I will now pass you over to my colleague Blair to talk to you a little bit more about time to shine thank you so thank you all and through the past two years we have experienced the absolute incredible passion of young people if you don't currently work with young people go and do it because it will change your life and the way that you work so two years in we are approaching our first biennial conference the time to shine on convention so that's going to be a thing where we showcase and celebrate the work that the young people not us and not quite of Scotland or young scot but the young people have actually been involved on a participating level have done over the past year the young people who've put their hearts into every action and have put their passion into what they do and so I and I'm sure we can't wait for that because it's shown off basically and they've done so much and it's going to be good to show off what they've done so we've also gone through the process recently of evaluating the implementation of time to shine so it's evaluating its effectiveness effectiveness two years into a 10-year strategy so we've got eight years to go we're just getting started and I've got so much to do but we're getting there so many things have become clear in this evaluation one of which relates to participation and ironically numbers but I'd like to refer to Maggie you said it earlier I believe from New Zealand numbers are important obviously for what you do but I think the way in which they're important can be changed in order to measure it we often slap a number on it so it would be one, one, one and that's measuring the width not the depth and in order to measure our true potential and our true value we need to get away from that when we measure by width not depth we reduce human beings to just one and we lose our true value we need to recognise depth not width when we show width we have nothing to gain all we have and all we aim for is more people and more young people being involved when we measure depth we have something and everything to play for because we aim to go deeper and improve on what we already have and for me that's so much more important getting a quality rather than a quantity so that's one of the things that we've learned through doing our current evaluation and that's what I want to share with you but finally I'd like to finish up just by referring back to Matthew from this morning I believe you said the opportunity to be defined by our achievements not our needs and I think young people all of us we have so much potential and we're defined by what we can do and everything and I'd love to share that with you and just take advantage of that because we're here and we're going to be where you are in 10, 15 years so why not use it just now and improve on that so we here in this room we have the opportunity to change lives and as a young person I would like to encourage you that before you change lives be willing to change your minds and let us change your minds thank you David, Emma, and Blair thank you very much thank you for that contribution and thank you to all our speakers this morning for the contribution we're now going to close this plenary session and go into our discussion groups and I'll hand over to Becky Houston to take charge again thank you