UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY (UNGA)
Multi-stakeholders Middle Council Expert Meeting
Side event
Awareness, Culture & Self-sustainable Development in the Digital Age… & Beyond
The awareness play Meeting in the Cave. From Polarisation to Inclusion will be implemented with keen attention to its environmental impact. It will be presented as the case study of the side event Awareness, Culture, and Self-sustainable Development in the Digital Age… & Beyond, an initiative of cultural philanthropy of the Spanda Foundation in Consultative Status with the UN-ECOSOC, during the first available Session of the General Assembly.
Background
As the international community is witnessing turmoil in all domains and we are moving towards defining what is still needed to achieve the 2030 Agenda, the hallmark of coming years will be our ability to balance financial and non-financial assets in implementing a new paradigm to stir up a profound social change while defining the guidelines along which we aim to collectively move.
All empirical evidence tells us that, in the first instance, change stems from increased awareness and that culture is the prime driver of innovation. The last fifty years of relying on Economics to solve compelling social issues haven’t nurtured the expected results, while the current human dysfunctional relation with Nature — climate issues, etc. — is a marker of our need to re-sync with the natural cycle, to feel grounded and connected, to experience the vital energy now engulfed in a liquid digital time.
This notwithstanding, the emergence of new collective awareness is palpable, a new value system leading to a new cultural paradigm is incoming. Shifting the value system in the dynamics of the 2030 Agenda and Beyond from Economics to Culture, of which Economics is but a sub-set, and refocusing inclusive attention, efforts and resources to an awakened culture of a life attuned with nature, would undoubtedly facilitate the process. In light of this, cultural awareness is one of the most suitable instruments to bring clarity in consciousness orientation, aligning and integrating into a holistic manner individual and collective sustainable development with the global evolution of consciousness, opening up new ways of approaching development work and its financing while contributing in defining the role of Global cooperation in co-creating the future we need, as too often what we want is not what we need.
Objectives
The side event, an initiative of cultural philanthropy of the Spanda Foundation, will bring together different worldviews with the aims to:
# Enhance awareness of the shifting cultural paradigm # Shit the value system of the 2030 Agenda and Beyond from Economics to Culture # Steer an awakened culture of a life attuned with nature
# Apply cultural awareness to advance an inclusive self-sustainable development to a higher human standard in a long-range perspective
# Foster the collective intelligence of the community to orientate knowledge, effort and resources to tackle current patterns of concern — climate change, polarisation, inequality, etc.— through the cultural lens.
# Share key evidence-based findings from the Meeting in the Cave case study.
Format
The side event is complemented by Meeting in the Cave the case study analysing and depicting how culture can enhance awareness for the common good in the digital age, and how partnership and collaboration among cultural institutions can advance the community’s intelligence towards a higher order of integration and performance.
The side event will be complemented by the case study Meeting in the Cave. From Polarisation to Inclusion, a meta-opera installation to take place in NYC for three weeks in conjunction with the side event, analysing how in the digital age culture can enhance awareness for the common good, and how partnership and collaboration among cultural institutions can advance the community’s intelligence towards a higher order of integration and performance.
The installation unfolds between the MoMA in Midtown Manhattan and the Jane’s Carousel in Brooklyn, relating Establishment and Margin, Centre and Periphery, high and popular culture, interconnecting in a digital exchange on the intervening urban area nodal cultural institutions: the Rockefeller Center, the Morgan Library, the School of Visual Arts, the Orpheum Theater, and the Tenement Museum.
Meeting in the Cave advances several Sustainable Development Goals: it ensures healthy lives upholding well-being for all at all ages (Goal 3); promotes life-long learning opportunities for all (Goal 4) by fostering a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity, gender equality, and building peace in communities (4.3); makes cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (11) by strengthening efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage (11.4), and promotes peaceful and inclusive societies (16). The side event format takes avail of Spanda’s devised Middle Council Methodology.
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The Middle Council Expert Meeting
Methodology
The Middle Council Methodology, equally applied throughout the case study, consists of bringing together in situ, live-streamed, top-down (UN representatives, diplomats, policymakers, Nodal Partners, institutions, academia, media and the IT industry) and bottom-up (artists, cultural activists, forward thinkers, trailblazers, visionaries, local communities and civil societies) approaches to achieve a middle outcome strategic design. Pulling and sharing knowledge from all sides and perspectives to analyse the interrelation between awareness, culture and development in the digital age, and synthesise in a shared result the collective intelligence of the findings, not only as a problem solver of compelling contemporary issues but as a path builder of the emerging cultural paradigm.
The side event is structured into two parts: the first, consists of an open discussion and dialogue session; the second, sums up outcomes and recommendations that will contribute to defining a shared path towards a self-sustainable inclusive, karma-free development along the lines of where collectively we want to go. The proceeding will be published in a special issue of the open-source Spanda Journal freely distributed online.
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