 Okay. Good morning. Great to see you all. Obviously we have a few folks who, because of travel plans, aren't, you know, have been a big part of the last couple of days and aren't here, but we certainly have an incredible critical mass here this morning. Thanks for being part of that and coming to this last session. I think our hopes for this last session are really embodied by the Circle, a totally open kind of conversation and taking stock of what's happened here, but I think especially kind of where we're going, what's needed, what thoughts are, and I think there's, you know, one we is certainly, you know, this group of people in Georgetown and the kind of constellation that's come together, but I think there's lots of we's that are in dialogue and discussion here, so feel free to speak on behalf of different we's, different groups. There are just a couple of really prosaic kind of pragmatic things that I can name right away that are happening in terms of, like, the website. As I already, as I mentioned quickly yesterday, there's a space on that site that's a kind of resource page that's meant to be a growing page, but it's got links to basically all, you know, we think, I haven't actually comprehensively gone back over it, but the idea was to create links to sort of all of the relevant organizations and projects that are kind of centrally represented here and potentially to add others to those and the hope is even though many people are in touch with many people that that's a space to go to and use in that way and also will be, in terms of a lot of people have just been asking about contact with each other and, you know, so we'll have a really great sort of email lists or clear, transparent way that everybody can be in touch with everybody else without that being all about trying to find business cards that are buried somewhere. So those are a couple of small things, but I know I think what we wanted to do, and Cynthia, feel free to frame anything differently before we begin this process, but it was this question of what's needed. We began to excavate at lunch yesterday at the four tables and I think then a lot of things continued in the rest of the day yesterday to kind of surface in the room around what's needed and things got said very explicitly about what's needed so maybe that even since lunch those conversations are evolving but we thought we'd begin with those kind of four discussion leaders to sort of frame what got said there and their own thoughts and then kind of open that up. I think my sense, even from talking with those four, is there going to be some overlapping themes and thoughts and what will happen at those tables and then also some individuals, specific ones. So does that sound, does anyone want to offer anything before we move into that kind of what is needed, sort of overview or distillation? Great. Does any one of those four people want to begin? So first I just want to say there is a ride board out front now to the left of, as you go out this door, for people who want to share rides to the airport or the train station or anywhere else you might want to share a ride to. So we can reduce our carbon footprint and save some money. So please feel free to take advantage of that. I'd like to think of these reflections as an ode in four parts. The first part is more questions. Since I, since on the panel the other day, I asked you all the ask questions, I have some questions and I just want to start with Yahya's beautiful statement yesterday. It is important to work together to see me and to see you. So I heard a bunch of models being discussed and I'd like to ask people to fill in whatever I'm missing, presenting international companies, producing translations of international plays, applied arts, traveling abroad to work with local populations abroad, using applied arts locally, touring productions abroad, quote unquote cultural exchange, quote unquote cultural diplomacy, underwriting, supporting artists abroad coming here. I'm sorry, underwriting and supporting artists abroad from here but underwriting and supporting them there and then bringing artists and scholars to the US. So under the umbrella of this weekend, that's a lot. Did I miss any other models that jumped out? I would add that there is the going there and the bringing here and there's also the existing in where you are and using the virtual space to have a real relationship and that's something that we're sort of exploring but I think you can stay where you are and still have a really rich exchange. Telemetry, telemetry is a very important part of that. Thank you. I would like for the model of Sundance in South Africa and other colleagues, exchanges that are designed to cultivate local capacity. I don't know what telemetry is actually. It's like video conferencing. Yeah, using telematic. Yeah, that's the term that's being used there. Okay, I'm glad to catch up on that. That just raises another point that Nadia and my panel had wanted to say and she believed just the amount of access online and you guys really brought that up but I think that is an important thing to emphasize that it isn't all physically going and coming and then just, and Danny, it's just been part of your conversation but I didn't hear and missed it but something that we're trying to do here is actually bring about more of a connection between artists coming and going and looking and observing online and the political social events in those places and the wonderful conferences about cultural exchange and I'm all for it, I think it's great but that isn't what I signed up for in recent cultural exchange so we're really going to try to figure out how to leverage that cultural exchange in a way that it intersects with what's going on in political exchange. Great, thank you. Just in here, the other part of what I missed and I think it relates to this is the notion of audiences and multiple audiences. Audiences here, audience there, audiences there for global capacity to build but also audiences here and those kind of exchange that are mediated through the arts that are about the audience. Yeah, Jonathan, just Jonathan. I thought it was important what was talked about communicating with the Foreign Service Institute and training our diplomats to understand how they can use the resources that we all represent but also what wasn't spoken about directly but several people here are involved with the Fulbright program and the Fulbright program represents a lot more money and resource than the direct cultural programming budget and artists are invited to participate Roberta can bear me up on this that artists are invited to participate in the Fulbright program in a lot of very intensive ways that allow for the artist to create the vehicle and create the means and create the program and that can be something that can be piggybacked upon so I think that we need to understand more what is there. This is great. I was actually really at the beginning just trying to frame the remarks by reflecting back the breadth of the types of things that we've attempted to grapple with I mean there are many, many, many more models and Joseph please speak but I just, I haven't even gotten to our table discussion yet I was just trying to frame it I was just trying to give a scan of how much we're trying to talk about and how different, I mean even just between the first two producing foreign companies and producing foreign work in translation locally are almost two entirely different conferences so I was just trying to, that's what I was trying to show was how big the elephant is that we're trying to wrestle I don't know if this is the right time we did in the process series four new translations we talked about translations as an art form that needed process as well as new work in general and that we need to sort of nurture that and so few theaters do it and so I propose that that conference this translation conference is connected to the series a model like the National New Play Network which encourages new work in the states which, you know, as people know the work here is really hard to get new plays off especially once there's a premiere getting other theaters new plays and I would say, well, and it's even harder in some sense to get new translations produced throughout the states and so to develop a network of theaters that are connected and institutions the National New Play Network is just theaters academic institutions and other institutes that are focused on translations such as, you know, Japanese culture The Theater Without Borders actually has on our website a whole initiative that's been started by a couple of our members around that as well so I think this is one of the things that we said at the table is that so many of us are doing so much overlapping work or intersecting work how do we then pool our resources and really so that your project and then Sarah Sundae who's, you know, how do we get all of these people talking to each other so we're not duplicating each other's efforts so that I think is one of the things that I guess my foreoads are going to happen out of order that is one thing that could really come out of here is it's just very clear how many people are trying to slice the same pie so I'm going to stop using metaphors in a second I just, Cynthia, I just didn't quite hear what you were saying were you saying that your interest is only as cultural exchange relates to foreign policy, can you, can you? Oh, I think, sometimes there's something wrong I'm saying this in the years people know but the idea behind this conference was to explore the intersection of cultural work and wherever it is taking place and foreign policy international relations social change, peace building, anything going on in society and politics in that place and that comes out of a recognition that in so many societies the artists and cultural figures are real agents of social change and that is not often recognized by the people in the political sphere so for example, in your case it was the embassy understood the political impact and societal impact of presenting a controversial play that raises issues that are very political in China so in your case it's a best practice case where it worked there are many other cases where cultural figures and unfortunately due to the budget we couldn't have as many here as we would like but China Nadine is a great example Haitham with this play about democracy is another example where the artists are really the canaries and the coal mines who are the ones out there exploring further pressing and pushing the envelope and the work that they do the local artists in the places is very often not recognized, not absorbed not integrated into policy by their own government and definitely not by arms There was an event in Asia society recently and cultural figures were on the stage talking about their complications with getting the State Department and getting political people to hear them and they were saying, well we have these projects and they're wonderful and we can talk to the cultural affairs people at embassies but when it comes to the front office meaning the ambassador and the people who really say yes or no it gets stopped because it doesn't meet mission goals but this is another what I took from that is that the artists on stage and the art institutions had not addressed their power and their voice in that regard and so they weren't speaking they weren't speaking to that mission which in this case is the next generation Muslim communities disenfranchised communities the kinds of communities that all of us are addressing so it's a question of vocabulary and understanding how to make the case you don't make the case that we have the best theater production or we have the best... I mean everybody here understands this but I'm not sure that everybody is actually utilizing the power of what they do to communicate with embassies I want to make sure in the time we have that the distillation work that our floor have done gets out there too that may help just that we don't end up not getting to that these are all really important conversations and actually I think that this will help with this these questions and thoughts that I have so just in reflection quickly to the... really the first two days I kept hearing the term theater be used so my questions are what is theater theater so my question is what is theater and where is theater I think that speakers were speaking from different perspectives of what theater is where it is, who it's for and I think it's really important that to recognize that there were many different uses of that term over the course of this weekend and all valid uses but I just wanted to note that that people were often speaking from different understandings of or had different perspectives on theater and also the conversation about aesthetics my question is who's aesthetics and from what cultural perspective aesthetics we also talked about the local and my question is which local I live in New Mexico and I think only one person in three days mentioned the indigenous population in the United States and so I just would like to bring that population into our understanding and reflections about the local can we think of diplomacy as multi-directional and not what can my country do for someone else so what can the presence of my government do in another country so Derek and I were talking last night and maybe because this term cultural diplomacy there have been a lot of side conversations about how vexed a term it is and maybe we want to think about intercultural diplomacy that there's a back and forth Layla said the other day we distinguish between the American people and the American foreign policy and again just teasing out these strands of people versus governments and also how the global and the local are in dialogue and how they can create mutual understanding there was this conversation about Baghdad and how it's bombed out a burned out city and that there are no movie theaters and the South Bronx in the 1970s out of which hip-hop was born population but there were no movie theaters there was planned shrinkage I mean almost every other building was bombed out burned out by landlord fires and things so just the way that these things can be in dialogue with each other often times when I do a presentation on hip-hop I show pictures of the South Bronx and I ask people where it is and the most common place that people guess that it is is Baghdad so it was interesting to hear the other perspective at the table with me yesterday were Alicia Adams, Ping Chong Sharon Memis, Margo Lee Sherman Adrian Alice Hansel, Tracy Francis John Vole and Nick Hull so I just want to bring them into the cipher into this conversation these are their thoughts as well though what do we need question we were talking about sustainability and I would ask what does that mean exactly and in what context and I think we started using that as a global word but I will apply some more pressure to it to get more specific about it that we need two-way processes in thinking about all of these numerous models that we laid out at the beginning here symmetry and exchanges in terms of power relationships a process that encourages self-reflection and demanding of our leaders that they be self-reflective again this is called from the table conversation at lunch yesterday, structure for us this us here in this room to work more as a community so what kind of structure would allow for that to happen more informed media a separation of cultural diplomacy from government as the British Council model seems to be and how do we get government to trust the artist and my sort of commentary on that is does government in fact trust itself does government believe in or trust diplomacy as a model the ability for humans to connect, change affect each other and leave ideology behind or is it kind of micromanaging as diplomacy has it become a kind of a way of micromanaging ideology and propaganda is this something that and then my larger question is in terms of asking a government to trust the artist is is this something that a market economy can afford to do doesn't a market economy to a certain extent attempt to control thinking attempt to control power relationships in order to perpetuate itself Leila said in Iraq we have no place to live life so we bring life to the theater so we can be free just want to keep bringing artist voices back into this conversation and moving forward I just want to briefly let folks know about two very interesting conversations that have happened in terms of future action that people might want to get on board with I had a very interesting conversation with Peter Marks about really asking the press to take up the same charge that he was asking theaters to take up and that all the things that he was asking theaters to do in terms of dialogue and education that asking the press to really use world music as a model where a single concert can be reviewed because it's part of criticism not part of a review and it's a criticism that has an overarching educational or conversational dialogue with a readership so that somebody said yesterday yes maybe they missed that concert from a group from Mali but if they read a well written piece of criticism they might be interested to go to the next group from Mali that is in town and that I think we can use that same model and he was very excited by that and just very excited to be in communication with artists and so we're hoping that maybe using Georgetown we can leverage some kind of dialogue there with with the press and then the second thing is that Penny O'Hata is Penny here I think she's going to be here this morning she and I were talking yesterday about these training sessions that happen for diplomats in training or people going out into the field and she was really explaining to me why those sessions have not been useful because basically in 45 minutes someone's trying to cover all of the visual art, music, dance and theater happening in the United States that they might want to program one day I mean that's what those training sessions look like and so she was I think there was some frustration about the way that this has been slotted into that training but she did mention that entirely different kind of training is being offered to them from a German source where they're using film and manuals that are downloaded and passed on to them about something else and I said well why don't we create a 30 minute video with artists who do this kind of work around the world saying what we need what does it take to come into your constituency your embassy and work and do this work and her face lit up and she just thought that would be great so that's another project that I think as a cohort we can begin to think about so finally just to reflect just briefly I think that is a fantastic idea that's one little part of the training that they've learned training for two weeks and she's talking about the specific training for the cultural attaches sadly I don't know what goes on in those two weeks it's really hard to imagine because the times that I've spoken at them and spoken about I recognize problems with the terms but making culture a part of what you do in the country using local artists hosting artists, showing films making it part of what you do as they always say this is the first time we've heard this so I have no idea what they're doing that's what the arts of the United States in 45 minutes is just one part they're there for two weeks doing that so the 30 minute video is a fantastic idea and maybe it's something that somebody should obviously support that as long as it is not like 45 minutes, reduced to 30 minutes well no but the difference is that you'd actually be hearing instead of from one person coming in trying to represent all the arts I mean we could do a theater video of what does it mean to be a theater artist and go into a country and that's something they can watch whenever it wouldn't necessarily be part of their two week training because they're so tightly booked so it would be a resource for people so these are ideas moving forward I'd be happy to hear from people who would like to work on either of them and I'll be in contact with various people about that here are just some overall reflections as we move the conversation forward very briefly these are what ifs, these are not shoulds these are what ifs I heard a lot of language over the weekend that attempt to monetize the arts and attempt to categorize the arts as something that we use to do something else I'm interested in exploring how do we think about demonetizing the arts stop treating, if we stop treating cultural diplomacy as a product as something that we leverage to accomplish something and this is what somebody else said before about the State Department's goal so how do at least among ourselves is it worthwhile to pay attention to the language that we're using and really resist this effort to commodify this thing that we're calling cultural diplomacy and it may mean as Derek said last night, it may mean using a different term can I just comment on that real quick I know you wanted to go through your words just because there are other people who want to speak who want to take up all this time I was interested in what was interesting to me about that is there's the language of monetizing consumer language there's also the instrumentalizing language I'm combining but we might want to keep them separate because I think one of the things is it's hard to get away from the question of instrumentalizing and I would just say that one of the interesting dynamics in the discussion over the last several days is on the one hand the recognition that the applied arts and applied humanities and applied cultural work has some dimension of that or other and it's how we think about that rather than always necessarily thinking of it as the arts trying to meet a commercialized requirement on its work in some way or other that's an imposition together with other interesting developments like how do you facilitate and build capacity for counterparts and promote their goals and aims and so kind of reconciling the language of instrumentalization is not necessarily about you know commodification with how to promote and build capacity of others is an interesting thing that I think has been kind of a space that has been identified and what people have been talking about and I think this is I'm obviously putting out some provocative thoughts for our collective ruminating so that's one perspective I'm actually proposing but you're coming from I mean we're working together but you're coming from one place and I'm coming as an artist from another place and I'm noticing and so this is my second point is fighting fire with fire the best solution in other words is learning to speak learning and monetization and implementation and what you're saying does that not feed the fire to more of that and I'm just being provocative here and it's not all one way or all the other but I noticed a pull towards this language of implementation and I noticed a movement away from the language of art which is very much about keeping it simple focusing on the human letting the form as Ann Bogart likes to call it suggesting the content when we're talking about implementation we're going to have to just compress you a little bit I know you can keep asking questions including me why don't we just hear the rest of the what ifs so other people that's what I was doing so I'm simply suggesting that we trust performance as methodology as Soyini was talking about and asking the question how do we do this how do we do performance as methodology have impact how do we continue to work artfully and to speak clearly and passionately as artists and inspire others with the artful way that all of us including there's art to administration there's art to to everything that everyone in this room does how do we move through the world and connect with others using art and performance as the methodology not necessarily implementation and monetization that's not a shift thank you two things I want to pull up super fast one is we Daniel actually in both Michael who's not here but his work some of you know but who is involved with the creation of a kind of center for performance and civic practice and a lot of that work and a lot of his work has been about trying to work directly with governmental bodies of one kind or another with kind of performance skills of performance and facilitation and it feels to me in that that's been a theme and that's here in Washington and here at Georgetown even though that strand hasn't been quite in the room with Michael not able to be here but that's another kind of partner in this work I feel like going forward and I want to make sure as we keep moving that this conversation this is selfish in a way for us there's a circle about about structure that you pulled out there sort of like the structure of how we gather we're not going to solve that today but that we don't lose that strand about you know the feedback of everybody in the circle about ideas about that I really want to make sure we get to and whatever we don't get to by noon get to in sort of smaller ways because that's how where we go forward from here is and how we go forward is obviously a moment of importance just to clarify you know what we're talking about here it may not be for everyone they say no no I really want to do that I want to go do my thing and have it you know stand on its own in its own artistic aesthetic whatever merit which is which is totally fine but just to come back the beginning what motivated this was Derek and me coming together around the incredible impact of the international performances that he brought here like ping chong like belarus free theater like dot theater and seeing how the foreign service students went to those and were so moved and kind of didn't know what to do with it because that didn't fit into their paradigm of what is important and how to understand and work in the world and then similarly they're going doing theater with Derek and they don't have to fit that in either so this selfish again this is our desire to bring those two together and find a way in looking at things like that carol is doing at Syracuse where the whole freshman entering class and 3,000 students are going to see this voices from the concoct that's going to be where they're launching that the university that's incredible incredible thing and it is I freely confess to instrumentalization I want people in the state department to understand that if they want to effectively counter extremism in pakistan they have to look to what shahid is doing and they have to understand that as something political that they can use I am completely in favor of using and so that just may not be for people may say no I don't want to do that I like the US government and that is totally fine but we are here looking for ways and languages and methods and structures to bring those two worlds together recognizing the incredible value of what is actually going on in many countries and also recognizing this new model of diplomacy which johnathan and joanna and others are doing not bringing things american there I think we all agree this is an updated model useful when it is used as susan's was you know to raise really interesting issues open up society and do all sorts of incredible things so it still has a place but an increasingly valuable model is the capacity building, raising, leveraging and empowering local voices so they go out in their own language in their own way and convey messages that are sympathetic to messages that we like and I don't mean we the US government I mean we human beings who care about other human beings living decent lives but they do it in their own language so increasingly the role that we from the west have is to facilitate that leverage that train that measure there so that's a different model they all involve some form of instrumentalization I was just talking about the language we use I wasn't talking about the process I agree completely with everything you just said I was just asking do we want to pay attention to the language that we're using to describe that process and do we want to find more of a balance between what artists do and how we communicate while we're doing it and the language in those exchanges that are being used that was my only question let's go to so these are reflections from our table we put a tarant, Pam Corsa Juanita Rob JJ and Jennifer Nelson and Simone I think there's about seven or eight points here I'll make them succinctly as possible so we finally decided that our question was what is needed to strengthen work in this area and these are the things real and virtual spaces where those engaged with arts culture, cultural diplomacy, peace building and the arts can find each other can be found by communities and agencies that would like to engage with them and newcomers to the field to find passive entries so real and virtual spaces more clarity about the meaning of particular discourse frames especially as they inform practice and spaces where language and concepts spaces like this where language and concepts can be negotiated, revised, clarified and contested some of the discourse frames are cultural diplomacy, public diplomacy cultural diplomacy came up this morning peace building the arts, art and social transformation arts and social justice cultural work theater, aesthetics, performance drama and etc thinking that in other art forms as well and another lens on that was perhaps a new discourse frame that is based on the synergies between arts and culture and various approaches to diplomacy, peace building and social justice and I would say from this experience we can see the need for sustained conversations, sustained communities of practice and inquiry because when people just come together once we're just finding each other and exploring our differences but you can't, you have to go deeper, you have to have some sustained conversations so clear and more effective language to communicate to policy makers and funders the efficacy of cultural diplomacy and arts based approaches to peace building so concise, clear, powerful messages in a strategic campaign to communicate them and that's a serious work that needs sustained attention more and more compelling documentation so what is the best evidence that we have available from program evaluations and also from research what do we know about short-term effects what do we know about how those effects contribute to longer-term changes in institutions, policies and cultural norms so we would say more research initiatives and more evaluation assessment and support for critical self-reflection we need more support, like more money we need so we talked a lot about how to leverage resources of support given the history of the defunding of arts initiatives but we thought about governmental support major investments from foundations universities as sources of support, businesses in the arts industries can they be leveraged for support for this kind of work and individuals including individual artists and cultural leaders who may have personal resources because of the celebrity universe that we operate in more and more rigorous ethical reflection on work so awareness of potential harms which I want to stop and awareness of the agencies of the agendas of the agencies and governments who might support our work and how at the risk of our work being appropriated for larger agendas that we don't actually support so I think I made the point today about the need for artists to be aware of how to and analyze the agencies of agendas that we're working with and I would say more people who straddle the various worlds of culture, creative work and peace building diplomacy in other words people who can have a foot in both worlds and negotiate the institutions that translate to each other and I would just say about this question that just came up about instrumentation this came up at the very beginning of the acting together project and we kind of made a tacit agreement to hold it lightly and to look at the paradox of it that in some ways the reason why the arts are so incredibly powerfully transformative is because they aren't described in terms of their use or their effects. It really does stretch our paradoxical thinking I know that a lot of artists would be alienated by the language of use just as much as a lot of policy makers need the language of use so how do we acknowledge all that and try to move within that this was a great I was lucky enough because Cindy needed to print it and I saw this as an album this morning and for me it's incredibly even this idea of the language itself which we're grappling with and the space of negotiation, revision clarification and contestation that's a paradox too because there's moments where we have to have the conversation about what term do we need and we're having that around cultural diplomacy but then to acknowledge that the fact that that's a problem is for real reasons it's not because they're not a lot of smart people trying to come up with the term there's something that play there so the work of coming to the term figuring out the term also needs to stay present as a dialogue rather than just arriving at something and it's happening it's just so many things that are really helpful let's keep moving through our I think with our other sort of leaders of these groups we can get all that stuff into the circle and then I think we'll have time to go so let's go to Nick well it's reassuring because a lot of the stuff we covered as well and I'll go quite fast through it hopefully as fast as Cynthia and I felt slightly different about the whole thing because I'm an outsider not being American but it was sort of interesting that we're grappling with somewhat the same problems in Europe as you're grappling with here we were really quite practical I had Amy from the British Council Susan Diane, Ragsdale and eventually at the end of our discussion Nick so we were a very very small group and three students who were having difficulty deciding what they would do in the future anyway one of them was off to Cambodia to find out one of the first points was the difficulty of lobbying for State Department money because there was no culture program it doesn't have a separate budget for a cultural budget within the State Department that was one thing that came up straight away putting the arts more centrally into US foreign policy but not prioritizing political values finding a new narrative of cross-cultural understanding having a chance of telling US stories in the same way that the Dutch, the French, the Germans and the British have with government support their stories persuading people that the US narrative reflects back on the huge energy and entrepreneurship of the cultural diversity of local US communities a point which was made over there but New Mexico and all that sort of thing frustration that foundations look at mosquito nets but not at actual cultural exchange and because of lack of funding there was a huge frustration from our group about the lack of socially engaged theater in the United States also big frustration that foundations are not easily lobbied on this issue multiple conversations have been had but to no avail the question was how can the arts be the next new fact and cultural exchange participatory models were all the rage and it's exactly the same in England and there was some worry as to whether participation led to amateurism whether it compromised artistic values by dumbing down but that was a trap we all felt could be fallen into if we weren't careful more effort we felt should be made to track models and aggregate best practice we urgently need more translators to describe and illuminate the process between policy and practice the sort of work that Nick is doing we need to find more people who can do that to make the politicians and the foundations understand what we're doing lack of joined up thinking from all of us in the arts and also from foundations state, department, NEA congress, government offices we should be on a mission to lobby for more joined up thinking and we should do it ourselves and that this group should be a lobby for cross cultural understanding and to advocate socially engaged theater and we felt very strongly that we should besiege the incoming secretary of state the minute his or her feet hit the ground we also funnily enough came up with an idea of a 30 minute film but our film was to be led by some very famous people in the arts to show good practice to actually be made maybe five examples of extremely good cross cultural and cultural diplomatic good practice and to put it out there and give it to congress and the secretary of state immediately and say this is what can be done and use it for advocacy to try and move ourselves up to the top of the agenda in the same way as the Clinton speech which you opened with talking about how she had actually suddenly realized the centrality of the arts and cultural diplomacy we start at the beginning by saying this is what the secretary of state needs to lead on we can make a difference I mean I was very struck there was an article some time ago in the financial times where a well-known economist was looking at the way the rhetoric the arts uses and the way economics is spoken about that drugs companies that make pills and treat patients contribute towards the economy that is generally in economic arguments thought the capitalist argument that pertains whereas doctors who treat patients and help patients recover actually cost the economy and that's how people think in those terms and that's exactly what happens with the arts it is thought the arts are a drain on the economy and we have not captured the rhetoric that basically says the arts contribute towards the economy they contribute spiritually to people's happiness they contribute to understanding they contribute to cultural diplomacy and they have a real monetary value and we have never made that argument properly we always are regarded as a drain on the economy and we have to chip the argument the other way around that's my personal view rather than the view of what was said around the table but we all recognise that this whole conversation was about money finally let's go to Shakir and then get everybody's voice well, expectedly quite a few things have been already covered so it was about some of the eight people including Professor Roger and Joanna and Michael from Bonds Professor can't hear you can you pull your seat up a little more so we can see you Iraqi artist here we we did a lot of talking but we ate also we ate Daniel's case I was wondering so well I think generally we all found this meaning fascinating and also rare occasion where academics and policy people involved with policy making and performers and also from a variety of cultural social background from other countries they were here and people thought that a lot of issues were very debated very well and although we may not have found answers to many questions but it was good that the questions were raised and that is in itself an achievement there was an interesting debate on this issue which I'm sure has been debated elsewhere also of the role of state department or diplomats and culture and artists so there were people who thought that there is an inherent conflict while departments like the state department they have a clear concrete view of what are their objectives and artists are more visionary and they are looking for truth rather than their own response and this also this was said that artists sometimes have their own point of view or own cultural diplomacy which could not necessarily be could not necessarily converge with what the diplomats or state department would be aiming for to point it out that state department is a big department and individuals matter and in the Farnistan's case we were told that they are letting them do the project and every time the theater people from the group meet the concerned officials they say so what are you doing in Farnistan so sometimes they don't even take interest or register what's going on and they let good people do their work so one should not like that and obviously everyone agreed that 45 minutes is not many minutes for covering the whole of culture so there is more need for giving more time to sensitize and educate the diplomats about the use of culture and then one point made here was that the diplomats and if there are cultural diplomats normally the diplomats are not posted for a long time in one place and this is a deliberate policy because they don't want to get too close and become native and then lose their objectivity so this is also something which needs to be reviewed because now it's my own experience that there was a Norwegian diplomat who later on became an investor who knew excellent and had become a Pakistan specialist so the things he could discuss and places where he could go and people he could relate to was unbelievable he had more access to for example the fundamentalist or religious lobbies than we ever had and I don't think that diplomats are so weak in their intellectual position or political position that they will be influenced and decide to maybe switch loyalties so that is something not going to happen so this point was made forcefully that there is a need to review the position which the cultural diplomats have in one country and they should be regarded as a resource rather than as something which they shouldn't be doing one other interesting point made was that US cinema this was made by our Iraqi friend Mr. Yahya the US cinema gives a very different Hollywood gives a very different image of America as if every American has a gun there is crime on every second street and there are aliens roaming about everywhere so that's true that's true so he suggested that if theater with real life humans if it is sent to other countries people might have a different depression that yes there are human beings living so we're determined to find them so one other interesting point made was that when foreign group is especially from the third world country is brought to US for performance it is also not only it's enriching for the audience in this country and maybe audience from that particular ethnic background but also back home he gets kind of a certificate a kind of authority that he has been recognized in the US so there becomes more become stronger in their own country so this is an additional advantage of bringing in artists from such countries and then also people lamented and which has been mentioned earlier that if the US would have institutions like Goethe Institute, Allianz France and British Council things would be better and this direct conflict which sometimes takes place of the State Department versus the political forces of that country that might be overcome and I remember way back in Pakistan there used to be American centers so I remember that well I mostly remember that we were air conditioned it was very rare a lot of young people in summer speciality and to pass their time they would also read some US magazines and newspapers and maybe get to know about the American society better one concrete proposal which has appeared in other forms here also at the convening a global performance center should be set up preferably in a place like Georgetown and other campus which should not only specifically interact and reach out to international groups especially from the third world but also analyze and serve as a resource for international drama and international theater groups that kind of information is not easily available in the US and last point which was also made by other groups is that impact assessment by policy makers, State Department or other grant making organizations is like theaters also commodity which can be quantified and which can be statistically explained so there should be different way of measuring the impact of theater or art then they measure the impact of economic aid or technical information or development of work so I think that is something which I would personally also endorse because once we we see how what kind of information is required from foreign donors especially in the US it is quite mind boggling for artists to see how they can quantify the impact, how they would quantify the evaluation of piece of art where sometimes the result might appear 5 years later how it has influenced certain community so this was broadly what was discussed and calling Daniel's lead I will add in some personal comments also if I may firstly there has been a talk about the use of new technology and social media and video technology, video conferencing and what was it the term, tele telepresence so whatever so I think there is still nothing like having a live human being on stage and experiencing that kind of theater because especially the kind of theater which we do or the kind of theater which you saw last night it's not something which can be or the individual communication can take place but the experience of theater still the technology has not found an alternative to live theater's experience and secondly the role of donors or funders is of two kinds one is to enable the theater groups in their own country to carry on their work because judging from my experience and experience of our friends in Iraq the governments or the other institutions they are at the best indifferent to performing arts and theater or usually antagonistic and hostile as well so and now the additional force of extremism is there which is trying to block the path of performing arts and theater so that is one important part of how the US can help artists in that situation the other is to enable artists to become ambassadors of their own country because the image of Muslim countries like Pakistan here is dependent on either what the governments in those countries decide to project or what the media here decides to project so usually it is distorted and if the people of America and also the policy makers see how cultural activists and theater people how they are fighting out their battle which needs international support then I think maybe there could be some significant changes in the policy thank you great so we have about I think 40 minutes or so they are kind of with everybody in the circle talking kind of try to you know continue to take stock of where we go from here there are two quick things I wanted to lift out of that for me it feels like the paradigm of translation surfaces in different ways in all of these and sort of like I just keep coming back to thinking about meeting with what Nick is talking about with sort of translators in the sense of not just the literal a one to one kind of transition but the idea of a kind of literal translator of kind of experience things that are known to be embodied from the artist to one other kind of person and creating more as what Cindy was talking about sort of straddlers you know people to do that work so that's just something that feels like in different ways people are talking about that need and how even in terms of trying to claim some language around that and ways that Georgetown and others might own an interrogation into what we mean by translation as part of the work that there is to do and try to because I think the surface you know I think about this beautiful Walter Benjamin essay right the task of the translator which is a beautiful like gets you thinking about translation as more than the way we tend to use it and so I just think that word and that idea is very live for me in this and then it's interesting to be hearing of course you know we're at Georgetown about what might happen here I would say anything we do here is going to need to be very nimble and agile and not a huge bureaucratic let's start now and build a huge new structure it's going to want to float and be in dialogue and partnership with so many others here so even in terms of thinking about what you know Syracuse and Brandeis and organizations like theater without orders and so many others that are represented in the circle hearing about what we might all create together we're in a virtual and actual spaces what is not the hope I think it's to come out of this and make something here and invite people sometimes like to come get a whiff of it like it's that's the sense you know this could be a location where certain things center around but I just throw that out there because I think the importance of keeping other institutional partnerships in the conversation seems really important so in the next 35 minutes there's a lot of strands but I think we'd love to hear from folks Susan I guess what I am hearing it seems to me there are two different endeavors going on one is the model of professional artists going into communities and working with ordinary people not professional artists but ordinary people and using what they know about art to help people understand more about themselves deal with issues et cetera et cetera and when you were talking earlier a couple of days ago about sustainability it seemed to me and I don't know if all of you Jonathan you all address this but to me sustainability in that endeavor involves teaching serious teaching of people in those countries how to do what you do because if you don't train people however wonderful that experience is it's not going to last it's just going to be among that wonderful small group of people that have had that great experience but if one of the really important aspects of this is training people in the countries to carry on this work to me that is I know it would be a whole other endeavor but to me it's a crucial next step in what people are doing the second thing which is more what Nick and I do it doesn't really have much to do with that at all it's a completely different endeavor and it's really about what I would like to think of is it has to do with excellence it's not just the message it's also excellence I can bring a a mediocre play with a message to me that doesn't serve anybody I think it's about excellence so that the best theater company or dance company or in the world or in the American world should be encouraged to come and do these things that it's not just about the message but there is something about the American experience American plays for example they're different than a British play they show a different part of there is something called the American character I mean there are when you think about the best American plays they it's not just about the message it's the way the people the way the characters approach problems I mean there's so many things about a great American play whether it's showing something very troubling in the society whatever it is it is very very specific and it also addresses this notion of being a counterpoint to this sort of pseudo fantasy world a lot of cinema which gives a very very distorted view of us as Americans and so great plays may be uncomfortable but it's a true view of who we are and so I think that and I think that I think as I said I think that if you do that I mean I'm going to talk personally I have a very particular interest I'm interested in bringing an excellent play that's aimed basically at young people at the future decision makers that's my personal interest another theater company may have a very different kind of an interest but I know that that's my interest I want to talk to the future decision makers in whatever country it is so they have a clear picture they can like it or not but it's a clear picture of what this of who we are and hopefully because I mean I believe in the value of certain kinds of American values that's what I'm putting out there so I do think that we should distinguish between these two kinds of activities that everybody in this group we do have different different things that we bring and that different advantages or disadvantages and we should sort of think about it acting together a project actually the entire spectrum can be included and in the acting together project it is included there are artists in the acting together project who do excellent work with artist based work they just happen to be living in a war zone so they are artists in conflict zones and then there are artists all across the spectrum to people who are working directly to do this project so I think that it is possible in the vision of what is the impact of each of our work in a political context to include all of us as practitioners we can make that division but we can also agree to be all in the same circle under the rubric of you do effective work culturally as a cultural diplomat from the United States and so do I in East Africa than what you do but we're both cultural ambassadors when we go so it is possible to include us all I think the biggest decision that is different is who is willing to see themselves as a cultural diplomat and who really feels that they don't want that circle placed around them personally I'm into cultural diplomacy because I think that theater because theater without borders is artists who are in dialogue and when we bring Wali and Amir and Shahid last year we were acting as acting in the capacity of political people and so whether it's just bringing guests from Pakistan and Iraq who had never been brought to the United States before that's an act of cultural diplomacy just because we're reaching out through our website and our action so I guess I feel like there's just a huge spectrum but I'm willing to put myself in the pool of trying to find that interaction and to discuss all the complexities of what's uncomfortable about it and what's not I just want to share our revelatory conversation there are many many things I learned during this session and I had a breakthrough talking to you and you came up to me and you said you were listening to me and you said your moment when you said you know there are many artists who say I made it and I'm speaking through my art and that's it I don't want to have to say anymore you said that reminds me of my wife and she's a sculptor and she doesn't want to have to explain her work and I'll just forgive me and then please say more yourself but you said that there's to you what struck you was that there was a difference between power and truth and that people in public policy are dealing with issues of power and artists are dealing with issues of truth and I kind of looked at you and I still wasn't there with you those two words and you said well that's a broad brush and then you moved towards something and I found completely revelatory this is the beginning of the translation and the language you said people in power are interested in stabilizing meaning because if they can stabilize meaning then they can create strategy around it they can move through it and they can they need to stabilize meaning but artists are questioning meaning revealing new meaning confusing meaning referring meaning we're destabilizing meaning that's what we want to do that's how we get where we need to go so now you have two people who are talking to each other one's trying to stabilize meaning and one's trying to destabilize meaning and I thank you so much because I feel like now I have a way to begin that's the kind of conversation I would love to keep going on so it is you listening to me and me listening to you that is suddenly pushing beginning to have us take steps towards one another so the notion of repeated convening so that we can develop this discourse develop more compelling documentation and I really I just want to mention a couple things that were highlighted to me so many of the things that have already been said but in our conversation about America houses and having an America house clocked down in Baghdad may not be the place where everybody wants to come right now even if they're good air conditioning but we were talking about Coke Studios Pakistan and we said Coke Studios Ethiopia Coke Studios Coca-Cola everybody loves Coca-Cola so that there could be together if we keep meeting we can find that thing that artists keep wanting the repetitive things we keep saying we want but we're not getting any new tack on it and what I find so exciting about listening to these beginning conversations is oh there might be another avenue and because of things I didn't know about I just wanted to say to reinforce what you said Shahid about amplifying artists in their own countries a power that I haven't thought about that we have the capacity to amplify artists as public intellectuals when Carlos Fuentes just died it was huge news and I don't want you to go anywhere but you are a public intellectual you are that we can help amplify that oh I'm sorry there's just one more but it'll come back anyway so I'm finding it very exciting to be beginning this encounter of of of conversation even that beautiful frame of meaning and stabilizing even naming that starts to do work because people whose job it is to stabilize meaning understand that frame for what their job is to do and then if they're in a room with someone's job to destabilize meaning then they look at what they each do differently and also to specifically follow up it's a very interesting framework for the role of artists in repressive countries because they are of course the authority figures are trying to stabilize everything and it is precisely the kind of deep destabilization that artists such as you bring about that actually is what the United States generally is looking for in those countries when we of course are supporting militant dictatorship but at least the ideals are supporting what you're doing stabilizing meaning in repressive societies turns stabilization into sclerosis and when there is sclerotic meaning then there can be repression you just connected for me what I was thinking about and there's been a conversation about not just who the artist practitioners are but knowing the audience who this work is for and I think one of the things maybe that folks in the State Department in this context trying to stabilize meaning are trying to know that audience and know the demographic so that they can be able to predict how to be able to work with them and we as artists come in and we say oh here's our piece but have your own reaction you know take from it what you will but we don't ever seek to really say this is the reaction that's going to happen when people watch this play right we don't we hate that kind of things no no no we don't want to do that but I think possibly in working towards finding common language of utilization that doesn't commodify but does still put it in a frame that can be understood by policymakers who are looking to stabilize meaning or stabilize their understanding of the demographic of people we can start to think about the effects the predictable effects that our work could have and really really take the time to get to know our audiences beforehand before we seek to present really learn about the people that we're hoping to bring them to I would say one thing about translation and one of your excellence and one thing about something else one of the interesting ideas about translation and emerging the acting together project came from our colleague Madhulapaliapatia from Sri Lanka who talked about how Tamil and Sinhalese artists could have played a role that they didn't play of interpreting the cultural forms of one community to the forms to the people of the other so there were Tamil productions that were actually meant to reach out in a peaceful way that were interpreted by the Sinhalese community as very threatened but that the artists could have played a role for each other so I just want to say that I think that that's a different another kind of translation another kind of work that's needed something about excellence is that I think it's important to as Roberta said to recognize artists base work community base work and also ritual or forms that emerge from indigenous communities as I was also saying all of which can have excellence they all can be done excellently and you can do community based work really professionally and excellently or you can do it very poorly and so I think it's important to look at these different forms and look for excellence in all of them but not think oh the artists based works is excellence and community based works is amateur community based work may involve artists or non artists but there's a way of doing it excellently that we need to reach for and I guess that just leads to this third piece which is I do think we have to take into account that we live in a world that is reeling still from the effects of colonization and where cultural forms were a part of large colonial regimes and when we come with a form it's not a neutral form and that's why I think it's really important to build capacity and interest among people who are very skillful in the arts for cultural work meaning supporting communities to remember to amplify their own forms and to build their own not to you know nostalgia or to but to develop their forms and not always have to be receiving ours with their meanings in that in terms of power just on excellence we'll bring that across those different groups and I also think there are many examples of groups whose excellence or sense of historically of excellence but as a pilot position gets them in a position to do a project that itself may not have that excellence so I think sometimes our great institutions don't always achieve excellence every time in the way that we would want excellence over work itself if I could just add to that excellence thing go ahead Joanne the funny thing that happens is if you're working with regular people and have no theater training and you're doing this kind of good work how long can you teach them how to do theater eventually when they get good they start having the same conversations we're having here should we go for excellence or should we go for meaning and how topical should we be to see the overall this has been fantastic and I'm sorry I missed the beginning and I wanted to throw a point in that goes with kind of the summary points you were talking about earlier and it may have come up but if it didn't I think it's important to recognize that this group of people is pretty exceptional and that you're really committed to international work and it's probably one of the few groups where there are a number of people who do it at the same time or it's your core mission in the larger arts community most of the international work happens as a component and activity sidebar and even within the governmental institutions it's marginal to be down this mission it's a part of the state department mission certain interpretation so that's part of the challenge here whereas in every art form this is sort of more a field and it's an emerging it's been merging for decades at least and there's no service organization this group probably constitutes the closest thing to a service organization for this field right now so in the consideration of sustainability and long-term thinking I think that's an element that needs to be grappled with I'm not sure and I have no solutions but I think it needs to go on the table with the rest of the points you've been talking about to if you're going to be and you know lobbying is maybe too strong or advocating it's really incredible the way this group as a loosely formed network has been able to make these advances forward so that the opportunity connections are key and maybe that's part of how you look to more to to identifying what a service organization network or structure network might be and also look at the other parts of the arts community that are doing this and sort of talking last night sort of on an opportunistic basis somebody knows somebody who's coming from another country so there's a presentation or theater artists need and yes we're going to collaborate those kinds of opportunistic which are great but if you're a non-profit organization, you're bored or like you get away with that for so long you know, devoting resources people and so on so I think that's a challenge in the infrastructure that would be a point for continued discussion I might add to that a little bit from the university connection I think one of the things that's important for universities as past through organizations and for helping funding is that universities are a really interesting and unique position to absorb risk and so we can offer things that it's part of our mission to do things that are risky and edgy and try to do new things it's called primary research for the scientists and for the artists it's called new work so I really appreciate that we're talking about the university I think we should really think about how we can embed not just the conversation but some of the action in some of these university programs that are trying to make a name there I think that's very good because also I wanted to say we're talking a lot about you were mentioning also training the people abroad but we need so much training here and it's at the universities where the future decision makers are and if we there already can make them believe that the arts are important that's when we get sets forward and in every single country of course I also think this is a quick insertion but I'm curious and it's sort of a glimmer of a dream kind of now but having been able to take work from Georgetown to a world festival of theater schools I get a lot of emails from people positioned around the world about coming to America to work from international from makers, from people for whom the idea of their cultural diplomacy and their theater work are probably whether they have that language or not are probably already won in the same thing in terms of how they're thinking about what they do in the world and so I'm curious about the potential of truly international training in these sites what that looks like as a lab for bringing together people from different parts of the world with different cultural and aesthetic traditions in one space so it's not just we're here or we're there so lots of us have teaching areas in other work we have one in Beijing in South America we have five centers in Europe I don't think we're using them as a victim to be incubators in other countries the centers are for the whole university we have a center in Florence Strasbourg, Madrid, London Beijing they're teaching centers for study abroad but we also have research centers in all those areas but to use them indeed globally with the people there because I do know that a lot of people are also looking at the university spreading out as a new colonization which you want to watch out for and that's my point is that I think we're not using them as effectively as reciprocal or as I think I have experience with this for me and things happen by chance as a medical faculty and a medical university I met Margo Margo introduced me to Roberto invited me and I graduated from UCLA 23 years then and Roberto was the director of CELFIA CELFIA that happened by chance right and now when I came last year I didn't tell the university I went to America so I just asked for one month and five this time it takes me five months I wanted to bring 15 students to learn here here and it was almost impossible they they agree with one thing and they change their mind they bring that it will cost money I don't send artists why I send doctors or engineers they find another excuses that maybe these kids don't understand and they don't have a problem so we I'm talking about I worked at the university so hard very very very hard and these 15 people we ended with three we were supposed to come with two places and we ended with one I think at this moment I achieved something this first step and with one thing communication between each other and face to face we worked and thank you about that next I met him at American University he said may I see your show and he says I'm passionately interested in experimental theatre so I connected I did my best I wanted to send him some beautiful bread and puppet books I asked the American Embassy in Baghdad oh no we don't do anything for a third person by chance I met Roberta just by surfing I told Roberta about I was cut off within three seconds Roberta answers I'll get him to the TCG conference I'll do it just like that what am I trying to say I have so much trouble with the American government always have I come from a much more radical theatre background bread and puppet got itself behind the iron curtain revolutionized Polish theatre people this was 60 known as I mentioned can we go to Czechoslovakia there's the Czech government no if you come here you'll cause a revolution we got to Iran in 1970 within a few seconds we really found out about the government there although Mrs. Sza was a promoter of the arts but people such as Mamoud who we all know was one of the young students whose job it was to meet us shake hands leave in our hands a tiny piece of paper that was folded up on the paper were lists of artists children's book illustrators who were in prison we did radicals theatre there before one of the shows my job was to say we made a mistake by coming here and performing for the richest Iranian people and their best French friends but according to Mamoud we really helped just by of course it's much harder now to do revolutionary theatre as Americans because if we killed but just by what are you all saying our belief system in making the art in that case it was much more critical of the powers of the but I think everyone here is a professional artist does their best work and however we bring it there I was having a conversation with Tolange this morning everything we do is political every conversation is political purpose or just by the nature of we're doing it I mean I don't know what I said but I just want to address strategy the strategy of artists to be able to do a lot of people have said to me my god how did you do 56 countries and frankly I didn't even notice how I did it because one led to the other and this is what I want to talk about there are human beings in embassies around the world you are all doing excellent work so when you do your excellent work in Cambodia and somebody brought you there because you said we will help you reach young people you spoke strategically you gave a message that they could present to the front office and then fund you you got there and then you do your art it's not about how you said you were going to do it you do it, they see it and they are moved to the south and the Philippines and South Korea and China so it's just like what you said it's by accident but it's also by connections with human beings that you find in these bureaucracies and that's something that I think it's kind of self evident to me and you don't need to argue about the meaning of your work or anything else because that's intrinsic to who you are on strategy Kenny I'm just wondering whether as the next step there could be a presentation to Rocco Landisman at the NEA to say we want to see the NEA help us forward the American international agenda both ways is that possible would he respond to that I mean maybe there isn't enough money you know even of course nearly enough money to find the domestic agenda I understand that but he's now a bully pulpit he now can speak and he now can maybe help us mobilize the kind of resources that we need and to Nick's point about the economic engine of the arts I mean the case has been made over and over again the documentation is here it's just that people don't read it into it and they don't act on it so we need the big figures we need people up high and I love the idea of getting right to the new secretary and all of that this is great strategy but what about the NEA as a vehicle that hasn't yet I mean you we all know how passionate you are about international work but you haven't been given the resources with the department yet well I think it's a question of exactly that the resources and the priorities and the focus of the endowment and the initiatives of this administration are focused on the connection between arts and economic development and the endowments logo what's on our business card now is artworks and that has the three double triple entendre one of those of which is to inspire to transcend into one where international would fit in I think that Rocco would be very open to a conversation to listening but I just within the resources of the endowment especially I mean our budget is put together two years out already at this point I just don't see that in the picture because of the impact and the struggle that we continue to have I mean we're thrilled this year that President Obama has requested five million dollars more for the I guess it's eight million dollars more five of which is designated for the initiative our town three because we have to move out of the building that we're in so the budget framework that we operate in is very tight the ongoing discussions with Congress are still about you know the importance of the arts to the economy of the United States so I'm not sure how much he would want to expand that it doesn't have to be from the NEA budget I would put this Fulbright event for last week MTV was being celebrated by Ambassador Rice and Amstok and so forth it was a huge thing what were they doing sponsoring four Fulbright MTV youth I never saw so much hoopla about so little but I and so I wrote to some people in the State Department I said what is this about and they said well there's probably a lot of money that MTV is giving it's not going into these fellowships but whatever so the thing is that I'm just looking for the voices that can get to MTV or Coke or whoever it is and say this is really important for the corporate the health of the corporate business overseas is the impression that the United States makes overseas that argument that very pragmatic argument that might awaken people and again we are probably not the people who can get the attention so that's I think that we would be open to that there is this organization that I mentioned to you and a couple of other people that just started that I can't remember the name of but it's called SAGE Strategic I don't remember what it's called but somebody can google it right now it is a private private sector effort headed by very powerful people Golia Meary who was the previous Undersecretary for Public Policy Public Affairs Tara Simon Tara Felici I'm sorry Jay Harmon anyway there's a very powerful people behind it and their intention is to raise I believe it's ten million dollars in their first year that have a business plan I can send a link to it and it's related to strategic communications and culture is within the framework but it's not clear really what their intention is in terms of culture it is supposed to be a grant making organization but the I believe it was two months ago that the announcement of the the organization was I think I sent it to the group that's on my little international list maybe we'll learn about it but it's still sort of open to understanding what they're really trying to do if they are going to be successful raising ten million dollars it's exactly that idea to get corporations especially some of the technology corporations to contribute to and it's in the framework of a good image of the United States is good for business it's exactly what you're trying to think about Can I say one thing about that because it's the opposite actually that happened last year which can see that indeed culture can be for a good investment agency so to speak last year of course when everything went down the drain in the Netherlands with culture Dutch artists put an article in New York Times or actually an advertisement very big on a page that said don't come to the Netherlands cultural meltdown in progress and we had a huge fight actually with our Netherlands for an investment agency because in that week that was posted in New York Times four American companies decided not to come to the Netherlands and went to the UK so you see the actual power back the power of a paper tomato the formal part of our conversations about the ending I want to get Nick and Steven and Roberta will be our last three and then of course we will you know there's no way to tie any of this up in these bows there's just so much in this circle and of course we will continue the conversation I just wanted to say one thing I think you underestimated this country the one strength enormous strength you have above Europe and above the United Kingdom and everyone you have this unbelievable relationship between the professional theater and universities in Europe the universities are distrusted by the profession and there is a bad relationship what I'm getting from today from Georgetown from CUNNY sadly aren't here from Syracuse and I'm certain I have not the great knowledge I should have about this but there is a feeling of profession and the universities communicating and there are a lot of people who understand about art working within the universities and really do understand and that should be very much part of the strategy I mean the idea the British Council talk and they're terrifically good and they talk about cultural diplomacy but if you actually went and talked to any university in England about cultural diplomacy everyone would look at you completely blankly they wouldn't have any idea what you're talking about this is something you do understand particularly in this city you really understand and this is something that's going to help you make the case and you can lead on this and you can be terrific as translators in the in the sense of translating for strategy and for advocating and I think what this conference has done I thank you very much for inviting me I find it tremendously eye-opening but it's something that you Americans really possess and should be very proud of it's something terrific On the language and micro-organizational getting of resources on the A question Peter Jay has been especially successful in finding language to talk about how our international work mobilizes local communities and that's where we've had our most success in getting funding on the big picture Washington speak I can think of another entry point that's based about this language of power wanting to destabilize meaning and destabilizing the artistic level at another level there is the security and development discussion which is really relevant on the ground and there is a kind of stabilization but when I say development the kind I'm talking about is with some external assistance but community led iterative which has its own arts kind of basis development and that kind of iterative destabilization leading to some sort of more rootedness is something that the stabilizers can understand and look at and I don't know how you get resources out of that I've had a few successes more failure to scale up problems in my life than anyone I just want to say that I've learned a number of languages and I am continuing to learn them from Sharon this conference I learned that the British Council is publishing a whole new study called trust pays what a beautiful interesting connection of two concepts she said if people trust the UK if they trust us they will invest so trust which is our value which is a value we can sign on to pays which is a value that the partner wants to sign on to capacity building human capacity building I started talking with development people what is your word what are you looking to do the open society in East Africa human capacity building Ford Foundation now is all about human capacity building they'll fund spaces art spaces but not art but the goal is human capacity building the goal is amplifying public voices the goal is creating events that support public discourse about important issues those are all things we know art does but we've never quite said it that way because we don't know their words so that's why I just wanted to me it's so important to continue to have conversations with people who are experts in that those in our partners in the collaborative partners field so they can teach us and like you sir hear us and hear what we're saying that you can make connections on our behalf so this notion of finding ways to continue to meet each other to make full men was so helpful in a long conversation with her over this session just talking about all that she's learned about these things and wanting to debrief and share with us some of the language that she's learned and the other thing I just wanted to say is that thank you very much Margo for mentioning that story I'll leave for mentioning that story what it demonstrates to me is that there are informal methods of cultural diplomacy and there are formal methods and some of us are more comfortable in the informal you did not want to be high profiling would have been no good at all for Richard checker to attend a certain festival in Iran that he was invited to two years ago because he would have been considered complicit with the regime he's too high level an artist would not have been good it would not have been good to have the U.S. State Department sitting next to you that would not have been helpful when the bread and pepper traveled in those days and we are in those days now I mean the issues that the I.T.I. was established to deal with of the former Soviet Union and the West in struggle with we are in a version of those days but it's in a different center it's in different places in the world and having U.S. State Department on our shoulder and I'm a Fulbright you know it's not always the best way to go in so can we also be sensitive in analyzing this this burgeoning field as you say Penny that there are informal methodologies are anonymous methodologies and there are also formal methodologies and even our partners in government could can the partners in government allow us to have our informal methodologies or the intermediary that is the good institute or the French cultural institute that gives them those people those cultural faces within countries protection because they're not known as as you know the CIA which is what I'm always asked the CIA so this kind of discussion somehow trying to get a grip on this so I hear what you're saying Jonathan about wanting to get it right there to the NEA or get it to the policy people but I feel like I'm not ready to get it there because I don't know what I'm saying I don't feel that I know enough about what the other team you know thinks and sees for me to be able to present it in an effective way so I really appreciate these two ways I just want to say a couple of things in closing in a certain sense of the adjoining one is just that we fence to the J TV and that world as far as I know every word that's been said in this space in the last couple of days has actually been recorded and documented and will be even available at the new play TV site to look at but also as a part of our job is both that's an incredible transcript especially in the kind of like plethora of strands and streams that are here but it's also the beginning of some work in terms of also extracting and distilling and you know I think I often feel at these things like oh my god like where does that all go and so I think very very seriously as we think about next steps for this whole group and this whole enterprise that's just this incredible resource for us to take really seriously that this happened and it's it's not just if it has it has that concreteness I you know I'm biased but in having partnered on this together but for me personally this has been a couple of the most energizing, rewarding days of my professional intellectual, artistic creative life because so many strands and questions life long ones, new ones coming out of being at Georgetown came into this and this has put so many faces to names to ideas to visions to practices in terms of people whose work students here are studying that I admire so I just wanted to say an enormous thank you to everybody for the time the energy, the initiative, the thought, the trust that you put into even kind of coming to this space not knowing what would be here and you know I think from our point of view it's just the beginning of a lot of things and we'll move forward together and figuring out what those are I'll begin first with I think we have to say that we will pull together out of Blue Play TV and thank you so much we will pull together out of that first transcript and then we will pull together some kind of summary report and we have to have that that we can distribute to you and that you can distribute and then on the website so we will definitely do that certainly I'll be before we post it anywhere for your comments and input and that will be the beginning of where we go forward and I think there will be more meetings small and big to keep this going and for you to keep talking to us and among each other you know I've talked a lot about the kind of hard things of reaching the policy world and instrumentalization and all that but ultimately I only do this because I'm so moved by the work and you know I go to so many meetings and I sit there and the board of the institute plays like that and they debate something like the US-Pakistan relationship which is so catastrophic right now and so completely talking past each other and I just sit there thinking if you could just only see Shahid's play and if you could see that play and laugh at each other and then you would take a deep breath and start all over again in a completely different way and that's why I do this Thank you all very very much to be continued