 Fawr iawn i chi. Fawr iawn i'w gweithio ar gyfer ystyrcasu hwn. Mae gennym ni'n gweithio ei hynny oherwydd yn rhoi'r youth-geffir whelys ystyrcasu hwn. Felly, yn cael ei gael y cyfnodraethio a chyrgyn goingswag erioedr iawn, ac mae'n ddifen nhw'n i'n gweithio i uned ysgorensiad gennyn am ffraithio francesgol i'n gweithio ar gyfer ysgorensiad eraill. Felly, roi'n gweithio i ysgorensiad paddwydau Llywodraeth i Llywodraeth ac Secretary of the World Heritage Convention and, since 2010, he has served as Assistant Director General of UNESCO for Culture. Professor Francesco Vandarena, thank you. Presiding Officer, honourable ministers, dear colleagues and friends who like first of all to express our thanks, the thanks of UNESCO to the summit for inviting us. It is really a pleasure and a honour to be with you today to exchange opinions and experiences on what we think is a critical element of our lives and our societies. That is to say the role of culture in all its manifestations and forms in the development of societies. I'd like also to thank Jonathan, an old friend for extending this invitation to us. As I had the task of somehow opening up this system of plenaries and round tables, please allow me to put on the table two elements, two elements for discussion, which we think are at the moment the ones that should attract the interest and the concern of the public opinion and the international community. These two items may seem a bit different, but in our view they are convergent and definitely they have to be considered and worked together. The first one is the policy that UNESCO, but many other member states and many other public and private bodies are developing and are supporting in the past decades I would say, but with an acceleration in recent time to place culture at the core of international development. I will elaborate a little bit and I hope that during the rest of the plenary and during the discussion we will be able to exchange further on this issue. The second item is the issue of protection of heritage in areas of conflict. As you know, an area of concern of our organization, but I would say in general of the member states of UNESCO and the member states and the public opinions that has taken unfortunately a very important role in our daily work. Let me just briefly mention, give you some elements on the first of the two items. Since the 1980s UNESCO has come up with the idea that culture in all its different manifestations I will use this term as a synthetic term to summarize elements that concern heritage, other that concerns creativity, of course including the cultural institutions and many other cultural dimensions that have been along the decades, along the year, somehow developed by our organization through the introduction in the international system of a number of treaties or conventions that deal with different types of heritage. In the 1990s we joined hands also with the World Bank at that time led by Mr Wolffinson to have culture as an important dimension of development and then in the year 2000s especially in 2005 a treaty, a convention was adopted by the member states. This treaty is called the Convention for the Protection and the Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and somehow seals the system of conventions that UNESCO has put in place since its beginning to protect cultural heritage just for your information. We have six of these treaties, some of them very famous like the World Heritage Convention or the Intangible Heritage Convention, other very well known like the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Heritage in the Conflict, which I will come back to, and the 1970 Convention for the Fight against the Lease of Traffical Cultural Heritage and other other elements. So we have tried to always say to our own system, the United Nations, to the other agencies that deal with development that culture should be put at the core of the development process, that no development can be effective and factual unless it considers the cultural dimension. I think we have been partially successful until now, but in recent times, especially since a campaign that we strongly pushed in the past three, four years, we were able to achieve some important results. I think these results are visible in the agenda 2030. This is the current international development agenda adopted by the United Nations last year in September, but it took many, many years to convince our own system, which sometimes is a little bit hard to convince, and the member states have voted to the agenda that this dimension should be in fact present in the system of goals and indicators that have been approved and adopted. You will find culture is somehow a transversal dimension, so you will not find a goal that is called culture, but you will find culture in many of the goals that have been approved last year, those concerned environment, for instance, those that have to do with health, those that have to do with economic development, and so on. In one of them, which is goal 11 in particular, the one that concerns cities, culture is perhaps the strongest expression. We are very happy for this because in fact cities are definitely the future dimension where everything happens, in particular in culture. We have also an opportunity in the coming two months. As you know, in October, the United Nations will convene the Habitat III conference, which takes place every 20 years, so it's really forward-looking and somehow considering the long term dimension of development. If you had the opportunity to read the draft text that has been already proposed and somehow finalised, you will see, and we are very happy for this, that culture has a really prominent role in the way in which the United Nations conceive and propose the development agenda for cities in the next 20 years. We are very happy for this because we have been part of this process, but I think most of it we are happy because we think that this is the right way to go. If there is an area and a dimension where culture can be and express its power, certainly this is the urban environment. We have also developed all along these years and we are not going to much detail, perhaps inviting you to read when it will be published our big report, the Global Report on Culture for Sustainable Cities, which we are issuing in Quito in October when the Habitat III conference will convene, but certainly we have an area which is very specific to heritage. We have over 300 World Heritage Cities in the World Heritage List. We have an area that concerns more creativity. We have 120 cities now in this Creative Cities Network. By the way, Edinburgh is one of them, actually both. Edinburgh is both World Heritage and Creative City for Literature, the first actually for this category. We have other networks that concern UNESCO mandate, both in education science and social sciences. We certainly think and see this urban dimension as a very important strategic area for the development of this original idea that culture is a pillar of international development framework. I would like to say that this is really a major piece for us, something that we will continue working on. I can see in many of the statements that have been done in the summit that there is a large consensus on this. I would like to really thank you for this because it's very important to have support from other bodies, other meetings, other forms, expressions of civil society and of course of public policy. Now in the same vein I would say that we need support for the other item that I mentioned as being at the core of our concern, the destruction of cultural heritage. Here with us, our friend, Mahmoun Abdul Karim, I will not go much in detail because he is the one that lives on a daily basis this drama. But certainly it has been for us in the past 70 years at least since UNESCO was created an agenda of action. UNESCO has always been active in areas of conflict because that's our mandate, we are UN body. But mostly with the function of somehow let's call it post-conflict reconstruction. We've been working of course in Angkor and Afghanistan and many other in Iraq and so many other countries after the conflict has left its marks and signs of destruction. We have of course some tools, we have two important international treaties. I mentioned them earlier, the 1954 Convention for Protection Heritage in the Case of Armed Conflict and the 1970 Convention which has a much broader scope, the illicit traffic of cultural heritage. But now it becomes very important in areas of conflict. And of course we have used these tools to do our work in all the areas where we have been involved. I mentioned Angkor, you may remember certainly the destruction of the Bambian Buddha as a major shock for the international public opinion. The destruction of Bridge of Moster and the library of Sarajevo here in Europe 20 years ago and now what we see today. The problem that today we see not a war here and a war there, we see 10 conflicts. We see a very extended, unmanageable front of destruction in the Middle East, in Africa, in Central Asia. This seems to become a very, very critical and unfortunately widespread phenomenon. And this brought us to some reflection we certainly saw that the tools that we had available. I mentioned these conventions but there are other tools where really not sufficient to address the issue. So we are currently working together with the member states to try to improve our capacity to deliver some support and to prevent damages of cultural heritage in areas of conflict. Last year in November the General Conference of UNESCO adopted a strategy which is called the strategy for the reinforcement of protection of cultural heritage in case of conflicts. And this strategy we are not implementing it has essentially a three tier structure. We tried to improve the capacity to prevent damages, certainly what concerns sites and museums and so on. We tried to do something more during conflict which is very difficult as you can imagine. It's very hard to intervene in areas when there are fights and combats are taking place. And of course we are trying to improve our capacity to help and support the post conflict reconstruction. Now of course these activities are very, some of them are very new for us and we see them especially the issue of intervention during conflict. We see them essentially around three areas. We would like to improve our capacity to support those who are in the ground. There's always somebody in the ground even when during a conflict and I think the experience of Maamun will certainly be illuminating on this. We have the possibility of supporting the peacekeeping operations that are mandated by the United Nations. There are already two situations where currently two of the UN missions, the one in Mali and the one in Congo, have in their mandate a specific component of cultural and natural heritage protection. And of course we can work with humanitarian operators particularly we have just signed an agreement with the International Committee of the Red Cross with an extremely important body, not the one that goes into the conflict when everybody goes out. Now in about a month we will present our action plan to our body and we hope that with the support of member states we can move forward and be able, be unable to deliver a better service to those who are in charge of protection of cultural heritage in these critical zones. I'm sure that this issue that has been already raised during the summit will be further discussed and I really look forward to cooperating with member states that are attending this summit and although the other ones to try to define a system that is more effective at the international level in support of the protection of cultural heritage. Well these are the two elements that I put on the table. There are quite big beasts both of them. I hope that during this discussion and during the summit we will be able to deliberate and elaborate on this. Thank you very much. Professor Bantwin, thank you very much. It's now my pleasure to welcome Prince Amin Aga Khan. Prince Amin is a member of the board of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, a director of the Aga Khan Foundation and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. He has been actively associated with the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture and the Historic Sufi Support Programme. Prince Amin, thank you. Professor Aming officer, honourable ministers, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you allow me to begin by expressing a couple of personal views and opinions since they probably colour my attitude to our institutional activities at the Aga Khan Development Network known as AKDN. My educational background was largely literary and musical. I believe that all art is essentially a reflection of our hearts, of our dreams, our fears, our regrets and our experiences. In that sense, the arts are universal, something we all share as an expression of our common human condition. They bind us and unite us from the prehistoric cave paintings to the abstract, from the half-tone to the quarter-tone. Our challenge is to see and not just to look, to listen and not just to hear. Against this common background, for me, culture is, by definition, evolutionary. Whether the dialogue between people and places ensued from education, as it did in the grand tours, and it should nowadays, from commerce, as it did along the historical trade routes, from war and conquest, as was so often the last of the case, or whatever. Culture is thus something we share, a human global heritage that binds us and in no way divides us. The dialogue of cultures has existed since time immemorial. The conflict of cultures is a modern and, I hope, temporary oxymoron. The AKDN has been engaged in culture as part of its development activities in the third world since 1977 and the creation of the Arcana Award for Architecture. Our action stemmed from our realization that in many places where we work, their cultural heritage is in fact the only asset at the disposal of the communities we seek to assist. We considered that it was important, indeed often essential, to activate such cultural assets as intellectual, economic and aspirational generators of ideas and actions that could possibly shape the quality of life of those communities. Contrary to earlier prejudices and preconceived notions in many areas of the developing world and instantly still all too often alive nowadays in the West, we took the position in those areas of unmet economic and social need which is where we work, that culture is not a luxury, not something by definition elitist and unfair, but quite to the contrary, a major potential source of economic and social development. Culture has not just the awareness of a proud, memorable and exclusive past, but something that can and should be made a commitment to a just, progressive and inclusive future. The challenge was how to make historic buildings and public spaces of recognized cultural significance, how to make sounds, colours and shapes of recognized cultural meaning become the sustainable basis for economic and social progress. Contrary to the public assumption at the time, culture has to be seen and to become an asset to development rather than a further unwanted drain on already limited resources. The activities of AKDN in the realm of culture are implemented by our contrast for culture known as AKTC with our many of acronyms. There are many projects of AKTC which I could present as examples of the path we have sought to trace. In Cairo we took a mountainous centuries old urban dump by the historic old town in an area of Cairo less well known to tourists being essentially Muslim and not pharaonic, and we turned into a public park, Al Azhar Park. The park looks across the historic city toward the Citadel and measures some 28 hectare. It includes a lake, a couple of restaurants employing incidentally more than 200 local persons, a children's area, a small amphitheater for theatrical, musical and other presentations and a number of recreational areas. It has these past years welcomed on average two million visitors per annum in times of peace and in times of public stress. Lo and behold it generates an annual financial surplus of an average of some US dollars one million which surplus has ensured us not only the upkeep of the park itself and its facilities but has permitted us to finance and execute since 2003 the restoration of 1.5 kilometers of the historic Ayubid 12th century wall that runs along the park and that had fallen into ruin. More, it has permitted us to complete a comprehensive urban regeneration program in neighbouring Darbyl-Ahmar on the other side of the wall where now several AKD agencies working together have been able to implement health, education, microfinance, housing, sanitation programs, arts and music programs while rehabilitating five historic monuments and smaller open urban spaces. We are even debating the creation of a small museum in Darbyl-Ahmar to exhibit the historical objects excavated and discovered during the restoration of the Ayubid wall and thus present to the public the history and arts of ancient Cairo. Now not only is Alhazard Park financially self-sufficient but has created economic and social benefits and a vastly improved quality of life for catchment area people by some 200,000 citizens that are neighbours of the park. In the years to come, it is to be hoped that the history and culture of Muslim Cairo will take that place alongside the more commonly known pharaonic culture of Egypt. Thus offering, part of one would hope through increased tourism that part of Cairo, further jobs and economic and social benefits to the population of the area. In Darbyl-Ahmar, creation of a green space has resulted in the restoration of significant monuments and an entire area development. Further away in Mali, we restored the three significant urban mosques in Jenny, Timbuktu and Mopti. In Timbuktu, several Sufi moselea at Cheshire the Mosque have since been damaged by the soldiers of prejudice during occupation of the city. But one of the very good consequences of our original restoration work is that we have precise architectural drawings of these moselea which provide the necessary basis to accomplish the restoration of these small buildings after the departure of the occupying forces. Further, as part of the restoration work in Mopti around the Great Mosque, we entered into a close working relationship with the local population. We discussed with them how to improve that area of the city and simultaneously how to ensure the longevity of the historic monuments just restored, ensuring the availability of the funds that would be required for their maintenance without it being necessary to call upon public finances. The local population responded enthusiastically and collaborated fully with us in this endeavour, giving freely of their time and abilities. So that with our help and technical advice, our neighbourhood was greatly upgraded through an extensive programme of street improvements, sanitation programmes, training programmes for masons, recycling programmes and the creation of clean toilets and bath facilities attached to a public café and a new centre for earthen architecture. The centre's aim is to inform the public about the techniques in building in mud and to perpetrate those techniques and it has a permanent display of objects, samples and images highlighting the switch tradition. Within this revived area, an array of shops, handicraft outlets and small commercial activities came into being. An entire Maillard, a multi-input area development, had in fact occurred as a result of the restoration of some monuments, a Maillard largely realised and made operational by self-help. Our experience shows that the local population must be centrally involved in any such project. Their buy-in is and must be seen as part of the asset base being developed. Their sense of how the project in question will affect their futures is necessary for them to show the pride and confidence in the project that ensures its resilience. Indeed the planning of cultural interventions aimed at development must involve centrally from the outset the local population. Justly it must consider issues related to the quality of life of those local populations. In a nutshell, the development scenario should have at its very heart the economic and social sustainability of the local population, recognising that local confidence is a primary requirement. As I have earlier indicated self-sustainability of initiatives in the cultural field is essential and must be at the heart of the planning exercise, eventual income streams must be projected and later realised that it is sufficient to sustain the project, or maintain it for instance if it is a building, on a long-term basis, not just in the development stage but on an ongoing basis thereafter. The goal should be an income stream that will produce in the longer term a surplus, which surplus can be reinvested in the project or can, as in the case of double Ahmad, make other projects possible. To be avoided as a fundamental error is that the project should turn into a net drain on the local population, let alone on the national or local governments. Of course, historical buildings are concerned, re-utilisation of these buildings to give them a new purpose, a new life and generate the necessary income stream can frequently become something of a conundrum, a challenge. Hotels, restaurants, cultural centres, display areas, meeting spaces and a thousand other possibilities to present themselves. Here again, local wisdom combined with careful thought into and study of the characteristics of that particular neighbourhood of the general area are required. Cultural assets and many museums tend to lose money for many years. Restaurants require sometimes costly kitchens that have very good cook. Meeting spaces have to be promoted, which can be expensive. The pitfalls are many. The world of culture and development has more facets than I think at first sight. I have mentioned Mali and Cairo. We have a similar project in Delhi, for instance. We are in Huayun's tomb, the Sunday nursery in Nizamudin Basti. We have one of the densest ensemble of monuments in the country. Forty-five of them, including nine more-laver tombs, spurred over 250 acres of heritage in central Delhi and urban renewal is gained being were implemented. Greenspace was stored and created. Vegetation identified and categorised and a plant nursery revived while master craftsmen in stone carving, plasterwork, masonry, carpentry are being trained, creating new employment. In this project too, we have sought to improve the quality of life of the resident communities, attending to the local requirements in health, education and sanitation, urban improvement, vocational training and waste collection, housing improvement, landscaping and madrasa improvement. As in Mali, many of these project responsibilities will be or are already taken over by the residents themselves. And we have similar projects in Kabul and Herat in Afghanistan and among the earlier such initiatives were those in Hunza in the northern areas of Pakistan. Even our music initiative is designed not only to protect and continue traditional music on traditional instruments with the great poetic works of the past, but to promote new musical creations, new musical careers of different kinds, to stimulate and revitalise the arts and handicrafts related music to create new young teachers and new scholarly institutions, to expand a local curricula and to ensure to local populations increased jobs and incomes from sources such as tourism and musical events. In these many initiatives we have come to judge their true value public-private partnerships. They have proved flexible, alliances often long-term and capable of numerous combinations as they can include partner development agencies, foundations, corporations, government, universities, faith communities, individual donors and of course local communities. Our experience showed these public-private partnerships could often prove keystone. In summary, we believe cultural activities in the field of development can and should aim to have a positive impact on both environments and public policy, setting aside as appropriate traditional concepts of separate public and private domains. They can and should promote good governance and strengthen civil society. Recognising that civil and private institutions have unique capacities for spurring economic and social progress while simultaneously having intrinsic ability to meet the challenge of diversity by giving diverse constituencies effective ways to express their distinct identities within a collaborative framework. In high mountain or coastal areas in urban or rural environments in peaceful or post-conflict situations the role of culture in development not only effectively combines the unique with the global, but so is it in the world of culture globalization can be expansion and inclusion rather than homogenisation inspiration and unification rather than a burden and divisive. Such cultural initiatives tend also to anchor civil society where it has been disrupted by civil disorder or conflict. Cultural heritage, both material and tangible, is our common shared heritage. Simultaneously the roots of our identity and an expression of our pluralism. My own hope is that all our efforts to see culture aid and contribute to development would result in those areas now developed producing in their turn new culture so that culture begets culture through time and place and internal dialogue continues. I would now like to introduce Professor Dr Mamun Abdul Karim, director general of antiquities and museums for Syria. I'm sure I speak for all of us today when I say that the troubles in your country have touched us all and I hope for you and your fellow citizens for a speedy and peaceful resolution to the convict. I'm especially grateful for you for travelling to Scotland to join us today Professor Abdul Karim. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, first of all I thank this summit of international of the cultural, especially our colleague Sir Jonathan Mills to invite me to give me this occasion to meet you perhaps from this location, important location in Scotland it's my first visit to Scotland and through my new English also perhaps I can send our voice voice of war in Syria of the tragedy from here to international community perhaps international community can give us some warm feeling through our cold isolation. Syrian cultural heritage is experiencing violent and dangerous attacks during this recent crisis due to the ups and of the cultural situation, threats against heritage have increased and include systematic illegal excavations carried out by professional army groups increased smoglit cultural objects through the Syrian border all the border very open through all this time vast region extending along Syria are now classified as distraised cultural area as well as the use of site as battlefield like Aleppo city today in tragedy what you know Aleppo is one of the most important world heritage city in the world unfortunately now Aleppo like Warsaw city in the 1944 another example attack is ideological by ISIS groups terrorist attack at Palmyra you know through the media what happened in the city how many buildings destroyed by this barbarity to attack our community heritage it is university heritage it is not just Syrian heritage because all my time as director general I accepted to work through this crisis since four years as professor coming from Damascus University I declared that we cannot divide our cultural heritage in two heritage one for the government and other for the opposition no we have one heritage for all Syrian people it is our collective identity our collective history and we share this heritage with international community however through all this tragedy our beauty of archaeology you know how many Syria is rich more 10,000 sites in Syria 34 museums many hundred thousand objects through all this tragedy however 99% of the collection of all the museums save it because we started the program of the saving since 2012 I remember it was my first condition to accept to be director general of antiquity if I can close directly the museums ministry of the culture accepted directly to give me this opportunity one week later we closed all the museums in Syria in the end summer of 2012 since four years fortunately we do it if no we will have disaster as a result we undertook several measures not to closing the museums saving their collection but also it was necessary to keep touch with the local community raising awareness if the government not here how I can save sites my sole option with my colleagues to contact the elites the local community it is your identity it is like the honour of your mothers you should too keep touch with your heritage and to defend your heritage cooperation with international actors to catalogue the damage and losses occurring to the cultural heritage of Syria its occasion for me also to thank UNESCO for the rule UNESCO through this crisis UNESCO refused to leave me in this cold isolation specially director general of UNESCO Madame Irina Mokova and her assistant our share dear friend Francisco Banderine keep a touch with me through all these 4 years bad years, sad years it was really for me I described myself through CNN all the media I am the saddest director general in the world because how you can defend this heritage alone through 2500 person working with us in this directorate we are still now working in area under control of the government and also under control of the opposition we refuse it to cut the salary we push it all employees to work without the politic our initiative director general's antiquity and museum from the beginning of their crisis was together people by what unites not divided them and this situation invite all of us to do our best together to put an end to this damage to cultural heritage the dangers surrounding the Syrian archaeological heritage are growing beyond our capabilities and limited resources they cannot by any man defeat our will we call on the international community to recognize the validity of this effort and provide assistance and support for our work to complete a national effort inside of Syria the international community needs to bear in mind that the Syrian cultural heritage is part of the world heritage of humanity and that the loss of any of its components is a loss for all the humanity in addition we would like to urge the international community to effectively stop extremists resources to try the antiquities and to pressure on the neighboring countries to prohibit illicit trafficking of the Syrian archaeological heritage hence the time has come to take action before it is too late to protect our heritage not in Syria just but also in Libya but also in Yemen in Iraq, Mali, Afghanistan etc to protect our heritage common heritage what we share with international community that is painful for all of us thank you very much thank you professor and I welcome Mr Zhang Xiaolun vice-minister of the ministry of culture the people's republic of China to the floor and I'm very pleased to welcome China to our international summit and we all benefit from this mutual exchange thank you minister distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen good morning it is my great pleasure to join you at this Edinburgh international culture summit and today's panel on cultural heritage China appreciates and actively supports the role of the UNESCO in safeguarding cultural diversity and sharing cultural assets across the world and has ratified and being committed to several UNESCO conventions including the 1972 world heritage world heritage convention convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage 2003 and convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions 2005 the collaboration between the Chinese government and the UNESCO has been tangible as well marked by several exchanges and information platforms for cultural heritage safeguarding in the Asia-Pacific region including a UNESCO category 2 centre the world heritage institute of training and research for the Asia and the Pacific region in Beijing and the five-year-old Chengdu International Festival of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Sichuan province, China in order to respond to the pressure of urban development and industrialisation in China's remarkable socio-economic transition in recent years the Chinese government has given the safeguarding of cultural heritage an important place in the national development agenda and adopted a working mechanism supervised by the government which engages various social sectors our work has a few highlights that are worth mentioning first is legislative and institutional progress promulgated in 1982 and 2011 respectively China's cultural heritage protection law and law on intangible cultural heritage safeguarding provide solid legal ground for cultural heritage safeguarding the state council of China appointed the Chinese state administration of cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage department in the ministry of culture of China to take particular care of tangible and intangible cultural heritage nationwide at local levels regulations, legal acts and specialised institutions have also been established by the end of 2015 there were more than 11,000 cultural heritage safeguarding institutions or across China with more than 160,000 employees second the principles of cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage safeguarding have been respectively identified as safeguarding as the focus rescuing as the priority and avoiding excessive exploitation and negligence in management as well as safeguarding as the focus rescuing as the priority and avoiding excessive exploitation and extinction for traditions by following these principles we need to make the most of cultural heritage in modern times but not at the expense of their safety and authenticity especially the vulnerable ones generally for tangible heritage we focus on protecting them from damage and urban erosion while for intangible heritage we encourage their transmission renewal and regeneration surly based on wide range surveys we created an inventory system which contains several inventories at national provincial city and township levels since 1956 we have yielded one inventory of 767 thousand heritage monuments and one of 14 million heritage properties we have also spent the last 38 years to document folklore and ethnic art all across China we have also published a 318 volume encyclopedia of folklore and arts of ethnic groups in China the 470 million word long encyclopedia was acclaimed as the great war of China's folk arts and ethnic cultural heritage during a national census of intangible cultural heritage carried out between 2005 and 2009 we have collected 290,000 valuable properties and documents we have taken 200 million words worth of notes and 230,000 hours of recordings and published 140,000 booklets of census this census gave us abundant information on the demographics of China's situation and how to safeguard our cultural heritage built our multi-level inventory system based on such information at present in China there are four levels national level provincial level city level and municipal level there are 4296 national heritage sites 129 historic cities 528 historic villages and 30 historic neighbourhoods we currently also have identified 1,372 representative national historic items since 2006 the Chinese government designated the second Saturday of June as the cultural heritage day so far 11 cultural heritage days were celebrated to raise the public awareness of China's cultural identity and traditions China adheres to the convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage and ethical principles for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in its cultural heritage safeguarding recently we started a new round of training workshops on the use of convention and ethical principles for safeguarding institution workers or across China so that they could better understand and act in accordance with these instruments when they deal with specific safeguarding cases in China today I would like to share with my international colleagues some of our ideas and practices in intangible cultural heritage safeguarding in recent years our principles in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in recent years are as follows the first is enhancing capacities bearers are the vehicles of conveying and transmitting intangible cultural heritage as living culture we believe that their safeguarding capacities should be constantly enhanced to keep these elements alive and kicking making them more visible popular and attractive to encourage more people especially young ones to engage in intangible cultural heritage safeguarding and transmission to make such efforts sustainable second it is important to enable intangible cultural heritage to adapt to modern life fundamentally it is about people and their life safeguarding attempts should focus on making traditional elements more relevant to day life of people in modern times in order to safeguard and recreate intangible cultural asset in a productive way we support the integration of modern design and expression concepts with traditional craftsmanship to add to the commercial value of such cultural heritage that could turn into tangible products third our safeguarding measures focus on strengthening and reinforcing the diverse and varied circumstances tangible and intangible that are necessary for the continuous evolution and interpretation of intangible cultural heritage as well as for its transmission to future generations our work to safeguard intangible cultural heritage has been carried out in the spirit of the three principles that I mentioned above so far we have launched a salvage program to record the knowledge skill and craftsmanship of 571 national representative intangible cultural heritage barriers that were at the risk of being lost the central budget of China grants 20,000 remaining each of the national representative barriers every year to subsidise their safeguarding efforts and in the coming five years the number of such facilities will also increase which we have invested in 96 currently more than 8,000 workshop centres and exhibition centres have been opened across the country in 2015 the Ministry of Culture Ministry of Education jointly initiated a training and capacity building program which invited practitioners to be trained and reeducated and so far 4,500 practitioners have attended the program in classrooms in 57 higher education institutions and these programs have been very positively received these program provides an opportunity for communities and ethnic groups to work together and for higher education institutions to engage in cultural efforts as well second we foster the rejuvenation of traditional handicrafts we focus on the preservation of production and the skills so through the promotion and the production we add new life into the craftsmanship since 2011 100 national pilot bases for commercialising in tangible cultural heritage have been set up across China in 2015 we launched a program to rejuvenate traditional craftsmanship which focused on both capacity building and matchmaking we also work with universities and help them partner with companies that are keen to regenerate and promote traditional culture and craftsmanship the Chinese government has written rejuvenation of traditional craftsmanship into its working papers to further boast the transmission of such heritage third we endeavour to promote holistic safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage since 2007 we have set up 18 national pilot zones for cultural conservation in closing areas of great historical significance well maintained heritage sites and distinct and very valuable intangible cultural heritage we support the local governments to safeguard the heritage as well as the cultural traditions our goal is to help each of these conservation zones celebrate their own distinct heritage and cultural values we hope to enrich the cultural life of the people moreover the ministry of culture ministry of housing and urban and renewable development and state administration of cultural heritage of China have identified more than 2500 villages as historical and heritage villages we aim to preserve their way of life we want to stop these villages from becoming commercial shops only we wish to preserve the soil of cultural heritage in all these work we always facting the conducive role of tourism to publicize cultural heritage in recent years more and more tourists have become interested in culture and discovery discovering heritage this is all I want to share with you on China's efforts it is a common task for all of us to safeguard our national heritage and promote cultural development China is always ready to strengthen exchange and tangible cooperation on cultural heritage safeguarding with other countries and we wish to promote further friendship and mutual understanding I thank you minister I now move to our final speaker for this morning's session and I would like to call Mr Olaji Lai Muhammad Minister of Information and Culture the Federal Republic of Nigeria to the floor and we very much look forward to hearing the Nigerian perspective on culture and heritage Mr Lai Muhammad The presiding officer Your Excellencies distinguished ladies and gentlemen It gives me great pleasure to be a miss today I have been asked to speak on an issue that is the central driving force of our economy in Nigeria that is the diversification of our economy and the role of the culture and consequently what we now know as the creative industries in ensuring that we achieve our goals and aspirations of the people Our government came in at the time of dwindling any from good oil which is also the mainstay of our economy and the focus of previous governments I am quickly realized that we have no choice but quickly and wisely pursue our diversification agenda It is not worthy that the current administration even before knowing that the price of good oil was going to plummet had promised Nigerians during its campaign that it was going to diversify the economy At my very first meeting with British Council I posited that that the diversification of our economy would not just be limited to agriculture or solid minerals sectors and I believe now more than ever then that one industry would be focusing on would be the creative industries because it is a major low hanging fruit that is immediately available for exploitation All over the world culture has been a unique symbol of identity that distinguishes a group of people with the same political history from other people My country Nigeria the most populous black nation in the world is endowed with such rich patrimony and culture diversity in all spheres fortunately for us black culture and creativity who are already getting attention despite the lack of government attention and investment The challenge now is how to harness this abundant cultural heritage and create an economy out of it More so that we know there is virtually no state in Nigeria today that cannot boast of three to five cultural industries be it in pottery painting textile making or leather works with very strong expression in film, music, theatre etc We are also motivated but need to preserve our cultural heritage which has informed our decision to revive a number of our dormant festivals such as the Arogyn Group Vision Festival and the Doba as well as age-long traditional games like Ayo and Traditional Wrestling in Jakadu As a ministry we have identified three goals we want to achieve as we pursue a diversification agenda The first is the provision of key infrastructure that will encourage local and foreign investments of the culture of the creative industries The second is the mass creation of jobs and development of skilled and managerial abilities and the third is formalising and growing the export of all aspects of the industry so that it becomes a significant foreign exchange earner for the country The pipes of distribution of all of this creativity will be developed and strengthened with international best practices urgently and wisely domesticated With approximately 24 million TV households over 150 television channels with a greater number of radio with smart phone penetration urging over 40 million and over 100 million phone lines sold to date and with over 20 million who are all primary consumers of the creativity located all over the world and with us being the commercial bedrock of the last frontier Africa we are ready for business Against this background I sought the support of British Council in assisting the agencies under my ministry to rediscover their capacity and revive the cultural industry as a major source of revenue for the nation I am happy to report that on Wednesday here in the great city of Edinburgh we signed a memorandum of understanding with the British Council that will help to revive a mollibond festival and prevent our traditional games which are referred to earlier from dying While other nations are making money I am building a reputation for the country I am building reputations on the invented games and sports such as yoga, judo, karate, scrabble chess, monopoly, etc our traditional neighbourhood games and sports such as IU IR and EK have lost appeal among our youths together with our partners including the British Council and the Tony Alumalu Foundation we hope to reverse this trend It must be noted that a recent study in the USA revealed that film, TV and other copyright industries added one trillion US dollars to the United States economy in 2012 alone The California economy which is one of the leading 10 economies in the world is centered largely on motion picture television film and related entertainment industries domiciled male in Hollywood Drawing from these international developments I have identified inadequate knowledge and the capacity to translate the nation's important cultural heritage into a viable economy as a being of the sector I believe the British Council can assist us in the area of capacity building identification of infrastructure are more importantly in the area of organizing how things work in a cooperative manner Happily, in line with my position the country directors said the diversification of the economy had equally been a huge challenge in Britain because of the country's over reliance on industries She noted that this has been an issue in the UK on the very central particularly in the north many cities have been dependent on industries which have not closed down She said a country had turned its thinking away from economic dependence by giving vent to its culture and creative industries which is now contributing positively to the British economy We have identified some of the key creative industries that are thriving in Nigeria The Norleywood film industry which today stands as the second biggest in the world according to UNESCO is virtually homegrown Our music is beginning to find its way into major international markets and our beats are now featured in chart-topping US hits We need to benefit from the abundance of our cultural resources like traditional medicine music food, cosmetics performing arts science and technology our expressions costumes we are simply not awake the fact that our cultural resources offer more lucrative alternatives to our oil deposits in the form of income derivable from entrance fees to facilities and exhibitions copyright charges for reproduction and use of collected rare objects photographs and visual images inquiry charges sale of publications publicity materials and promotion licensing agreements to mention a few We need to be alert to harvest our many distinctive tangible and intangible cultural resources Nigeria has opened opportunities to boost tourism and the hospitality business national and international carnivals and festivals Each community celebrates its festivals at different times of the year in line with their customs Government has further created enabling environment for the celebration of national festivals as well as upgrading them to international festivals Some of the leading examples are the Abuja Carnival celebrated in November of every year the Kalabab Festival in December and the Arugunguf International Festival in March of every year We have so much to sell to the world that we create immense information and entertainment value so many untold stories so many solutions to various problems and whilst it is so we may have seemed unprepared and confused as to what to do going forward we are moving with the plan and clear objectives There is no doubt that the Nigerian Government is determined to reposition creative industry in its quest for economic diversification However there are indeed various challenges impeding the process waiting to be overcome We are mapping the whole industry as an intrinsic part of the way forward and I must once again sign the British Council in their role in helping us overcome national hurdle At this juncture I wish to thank the organisers of this forum for providing this important platform for a successful interface on culture and its many positive attributes It has been very exciting to associate with this noble gathering and today's eventually marks a new dimension in our relationship On this note distinguished ladies and gentlemen I invite you all to invest massively in the entire resources of Nigeria's cultural industries as non oil export alternative for economic growth and development I thank you for listening Thank you very much minister and for that final appeal I thank all our delegates this morning for their thoughtful contributions We are now going to break out into discussion groups so for everyone to participate and engage as we have heard That will take us up to lunch at 12.30 The plenary session this afternoon will start at 2 o'clock So now I am going to hand over to Vicky Little who is going to tell you exactly what to do I close this session