Global Cultural Relations Programme (GCRP): Alumni Success Stories

Our alumni have a lot of talent!

Over the years the Global Cultural Relations Programme (GCRP) has built a community of nearly 220 cultural practitioners from all over the world. These highly skilled professionals and cultural promoters from diverse creative sectors are strongly committed to international cooperation.

 We regularly engage with our network of alumni and closely follow their activities and involvement in the field of cultural relations. Our alumni continue to collaborate internationally with each other or on their own long after their participation in our programme.

 Here are some recent examples of the amazing things our alumni have achieved since taking part!

Alumni Funded Projects

During the GCLP Alumni Reunion in 2019, we launched a seed fund to initiate transnational cooperation projects between participants of the programme and support them to continue developing long term. Three projects were selected by the participants themselves:

• Project #1: Culture and the SDGs: enhancing creative cross-sectoral collaborations is an experimental project that incorporates both action research and capacity building trainings, bringing together professionals from the cultural sector working towards sustainable development. The project, hosted by the non-profit organization Culture and Sustainability Lab, founded and directed by our alumni Aleksandra Bajde (Slovenia), aims to create publicly accessible models that would facilitate collaboration between diverse actors, and in parallel, define the potential of culture in the successor of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. You can find more information here.

• Project #2: RIMA is a digital multilingual platform that aims to connect creative practitioners from the Global South with institutions. The idea is to encourage its members to exchange experiences on navigating international borders, project development, funding, and network building. The project was formulated by Nallely Vázquez (Mexico), Sada Mafumfashi  (Nigeria), Danae Eleni (UK/Greece) and Carlos Zerpa (Venezuela), creative practitioners from different disciplines who met at the Global Cultural Relations Programme (GCRP) in November 2021.

• Project #3: Imagining Peace supports bottom-up peacebuilding initiatives that use arts and culture. Through a series of research discussions with grassroots initiatives in post-conflict settings, they aim to create an interactive toolkit that is easy to use and comprehend for artists, cultural managers and peacebuilders. The Project is run by five people from post-conflict and conflict settings: Hellen Almoustafa (Syria), Danae Eleni Pallikaropoulos (Greece/UK), Lisa Siomicheva (Russia), Sparsh Ahuja (India) and our alumni Vana Filipovski (Serbia).

Alumni Personal / Collaboration Projects

We regularly connect with our alumni through our website and social media. We often invite them to participate in our live and online events and give them the opportunity to shape future editions of our GCRP programme.

Equity Team

“The assemblage of the Equity Team, which is comprised of ten individuals from ten different countries, was consequent to a panel discussion during GCRP 2022  about what equity means and how it is experienced within international cultural relations. I think our greatest accomplishment to date has been the shared understanding that beyond discourse, we have a duty and responsibility to create tangible solutions that are impactful, implementable and context specific.

We have shared personal stories revolving around our experiences of race, gender, the global North-South divide, classism, elitism etc. In reflecting on GCRP 2022, one of my colleagues and team members, Nele Tast, penned that what stood out for her in the equity panel discussion was that “we don’t need another toolkit for fair cooperation, we just need to start changing things in practice.” That is an accurate summary of what the Equity Team is and what it seeks to achieve. It is wheels of change, in motion!”

Lisa Sidambe – Zimbabwe.

The Atlas of Cultural Policy and Sustainable Development

“Aura (the consultancy I co-founded and currently direct) developed an Atlas of Cultural Policy and Sustainable Development that presents different initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean. The publication was commissioned to Aura by the British Council in Mexico and maps cultural policies from a sample of countries where the British Council has presence. When Mariana Soares and I met in Turkey as part of the GCRP programme, we spoke about the different projects we were working on. I learned that Mariana had great experience working on cultural policy in Latin America and her knowledge was something that could really strengthen the Atlas we were developing. We brought her in as part of the team.

The Atlas of Cultural Policy and Sustainable Development presents, in 146 charts, a selection of outstanding cases and examples that summarize, shortly and systematically, specific topics focusing on ten countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The publication seeks to provide the status of the matter and showcase the approaches and examples of cultural policies in the region, as well as identifying trends and opportunities to trigger efforts and promote the creation of cultural policies related to sustainable development.”

Isabel Gil – México