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IDN-InDepthNews

 

EURASIA Focus

   

 

Acronym of the Year

    

UN INSIDER

ARTS & CULTURE

Image courtesy of Campion College.

By A.D. McKenzie

KINGSTON (IDN | SWAN) – Dance has long been a potent force among the arts in Jamaica, with pioneering companies such as Rex Nettleford’s National Dance Theatre Company holding a mirror up to society and promoting Caribbean culture.

Now students are taking the genre to a whole new level with powerful, socially relevant performances.

The island’s top high school, Campion College, is one of the institutions leading the way. Now in its seventh season, the school’s Dance Society performed to packed audiences in Kingston in July with its “Roots” production, which addressed issues such as violence against women and the challenges young people face in building confidence and self-esteem.

ARTS & CULTURE

Photo: Quran Roundabout in Sharjah, which has been named World Book Capital 2019. Credit: TripAdvisor

By Phil Harris

ROME | PARIS (IDN) – Signalling a major achievement for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Arab world, Sharjah has been named World Book Capital 2019 by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

The honour is recognition of the emirate's pioneering role in supporting and expanding the local and regional publishing industries, promoting reading to become an intrinsic cultural practice, as well as embracing intercultural, knowledge-based dialogue.

UN INSIDER

Photo: Samarkand, by Richard-Karl Karlovitch Zommer (1866–1939) - Christie's, LotFinder: entry 5146250 (sale 7684, lot 349, London, 26 November 2008). Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

By Shastri Ramachandaran

TASHKENT | SAMARKAND (IDN) - Cultural legacies, with their inevitable potential for controversies compounded by competing claims between contending nations, can be fraught affairs. Disputes over art works and artefacts of one country being found in another are legion. The UNESCO convention, which mandates return of illegally acquired objects to country of origin when provenance is established beyond doubt, is actually an acknowledgement that disputes are bound to persist and, therefore, require a basis to be addressed.

Although there are numerous instances where countries have resolved disputes over cultural objects in an amicable manner, many a long-running controversial case remains unresolved. One of the best-known cases is that of India’s fabled Kohinoor diamond.

THE WORLD
Europe & Central Asia

Image credit: UNESCO

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS (IDN | SWAN) – The “musically vibrant and culturally rich city” of Havana, Cuba, will host the main concert of this year’s International Jazz Day, to be celebrated worldwide on April 30, according to the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

In a joint announcement, the agency’s director-general Irina Bokova and American jazz musician Herbie Hancock (a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador) said that the day will culminate with an All-Star Global Concert presented at the Gran Teatro de La Habana Alicia Alonso.

ARTS & CULTURE

Photo: Merengue musicians in the Dominican Republic. Credit: Ministry of Culture

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS (IDN | SWAN) – Many people know of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, which include structures such as China’s Great Wall and Tanzania’s Stone Town of Zanzibar – “places on earth that are of outstanding universal value to humanity” – but fewer perhaps know of the UN agency’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

This is an international register of cultural practices that are important for communities, in both traditional and modern ways, and 171 UNESCO member states have ratified a convention to safeguard these types of customs.

ARTS & CULTURE

Photo credit: Museo Nacional de Arte

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS (IDN | SWAN) – It is being billed as the largest exhibition devoted to Mexican art in at least half a century, and the impressive show now on at Paris’ Grand Palais does feel like a landmark event.

Titled Mexique 1900 - 1950: Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Orozco and the avant-garde, it features Mexico’s most famous artists, as well as those less known, and gives a historical perspective of the Latin American country through its art.

ARTS & CULTURE

Photo: Belkis Ayon, La consagracion II (The Consecration II), 1991, collograph. Collection of the Belkis Ayon Estate.

By A.D. McKenzie

LOS ANGELES | PARIS - When Cuban artist Belkis Ayón died in 1999, she was only 32 years old, but she left behind a body of work that belied her age, comprising huge and striking prints that had already received international critical acclaim.

Now, for the first time, a museum in the United States is hosting a solo retrospective of her work, with a view to making the public more aware of this singular artist who reflected Afro-Cuban traditions, the history of contemporary printmaking and the challenges that her country faced in the 1990s.

ARTS & CULTURE

Photo: Nigerian-born, London-based writer Ben Okri will be one of the speakers at the Manchester Literature Festival

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS – While many literature festivals have become predictable in their line-up of bestselling authors, some innovative events have added a social-issues factor to their sessions, raising awareness about everything from climate change to the need for more diversity in publishing.

The Manchester Literature Festival (MLF), taking place October 7-23 in northern England and celebrating its 11th anniversary, is one such event. This regional gathering of authors and book-lovers has increased its focus on global concerns since 2006, and its programme this year includes topics such as immigration, mental health and the urban experience.

ARTS & CULTURE

Image credit: Cinema for Peace Foundation.

By Courtesy of Cinema for Peace Foundation

RIO DE JANEIRO (IDN-INPS) - The Olympics should have been a time of peace, but the world was at war. There were 19 wars and 16 war-like conflicts in the world during the Olympic Games. Overall, there are 409 conflicts, of which 223 are violent.

To shine a light on conflicts and to endorse the peaceful ideals of Olympic Games the initiative Sports for Peace, who hosted at the London Olympics Muhammad Ali's farewell, presented the 'Olympic Ideal of Peace' light installation in the Santa Marta Favela in Rio.

SUSTAINABILITY
Peace & Justice

Photo: North African immigrants in Sicily. Credit: Vito Manzari from Martina Franca (TA), Italy CC BY 2.0

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS | LONDON (IDN) - Concerned by widespread public confusion and the lack of clear political action on migration, many non-governmental groups have been launching initiatives to raise awareness about the issue, and about the current situation of refugees in Europe.

One of these projects is an exhibition currently under way in London, titled Call me by my name: stories from Calais and beyond, which comes as countries prepare to observe World Refugee Day on June 20 and Refugee Week from June 20 to 26.

The exhibition features the inhabitants of the infamous Calais camp in France, which the show’s organisers say has become “a potent symbol of Europe’s migration crisis”. There, some 4,000 to 5,000 migrants have been living in squalid conditions as they try to reach Britain, although the French authorities this year set up shelters made from shipping containers to house about 1,500 people.

THE WORLD

  1. Paris Looks at Fierce Son of a Preacher Man: James Baldwin
  2. Buddhists Take the ‘Gospel’ Music Path to Attract Youth
  3. Art Exhibition Highlights Regional Bank’s Commitment to ‘Lighting Africa’
  4. Tributes Pour in For Papa Wemba
  5. Somali-British Poet Penned Verses in 'Lemonade'

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