Regional Meeting of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) clusters from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in Beirut

BEIRUT | November 15, 2012, 09h38

On November 15-16, the Regional Meeting of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) clusters from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region will be hosted by the French Institute in Beirut.

The Lebanese and international press are invited to the opening meeting with representatives from EUNIC, Lebanon and other countries of the region that will take place on Thursday November 15th from 9:00 to 10:00 am at the Institut francais.

The EUNIC members from the MENA region include countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia. The regional meeting will also be attended by EUNIC Global President Mrs. Delphine Borione, director general in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Charles-Etienne Lagasse, EUNIC Vice-president and General Inspector for Wallonie-Bruxelles International (Belgium) as well as Andrei Marga, president of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Bucharest. The purpose of this annual meeting is to share experiences and expertise of successful actions, to define joint projects and programming examples and to further good practice among the European cultural institutes working in the Arab World. Lebanese civil society actors will also participate to the regional meeting aiming to get involved in EUNIC projects that are already running and to develop new common projects together with the European cultural network.

The regional EUNIC meeting in Beirut follows the Euro-Mediterranean Forum on Creative Industries and Society, organized by EUNIC at the Dead Sea, in Jordan, between the 13 and 15 of May 2012. The event was the launch pad of a long-term EUNIC Middle East and North Africa project (EUNIC MENA project) which will address Democratic Empowerment, Cultural Policy and Creative Economy. The aim is to support the creative sector in the MENA region to redefine cultural policies and to respond to the changing socio-political context in the region, to demonstrate the potential of the creative industries, to increase and reshape the scope of cultural exchanges in the Euro-Mediterranean area and to strengthen competitiveness of the sector.

EUNIC aims at establishing partnerships and networks amongst the European cultural institutes in different countries around the world. The main objective of EUNIC in Lebanon is to improve the coordination between European Cultural centers, start new initiatives, organize joint activities and events, and respond collectively to European open calls for proposals in order to generate additional funding. The members of the Lebanese cluster of EUNIC are - The British Council, the Goethe-Institut, the Romanian Cultural Institute, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Instituto Cervantes, the Danish Cultural Institute, the Institut fran?ais du Liban and the Serbian Embassy as associate member. The Romanian Cultural Institute, through dr. Dan Stoenescu, cultural attach? of the Romanian Embassy, holds the presidency of EUNIC in Lebanon for 2012-2013, for a second time in a row.

Source: http://iloubnan.info/en/detail/18/76339

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