The United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has
announced it is “launching initiatives” to support cultural industries and
cultural heritage, sectors hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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| UNESCO's Director-General Audrey Azoulay. (Photo: UNESCO/Calix) |
“COVID-19 has
put many intangible cultural heritage practices, including rituals and
ceremonies, on hold, impacting communities everywhere,” the organization stated
April 9. “It has also cost many jobs, and across the globe, artists … are now
unable to make ends meet.”
Governments
ordered the lockdown of museums, theatres, cinemas and other cultural
institutions (along with schools) as infections from the new coronavirus spread
around the world in March and April - resulting in 95,000 deaths as of April 9. (The victims have included cultural icons such as playwright Terrence McNally
and musicians Manu Dibango, Ellis Marsalis Jr, and John Prine.)
Many arts businesses
will find it economically difficult to recover, officials have acknowledged. Bookshops
too have had to close their doors, while publishers have largely postponed the publication of books. Numerous international visual-art, literary
and music events have been cancelled as well, including the UNESCO-sponsored International
Jazz Day main concerts, which were scheduled to take place in South Africa
April 30.
The UN had
already launched measures to assist the estimated 1.5 billion students affected
by school closures, but this is the first time its cultural agency has directly addressed the
impact on the arts.
“UNESCO is
committed to leading a global discussion on how best to support artists and
cultural institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, and ensuring
everyone can stay in touch with the heritage and culture that connects them to
their humanity,” stated UNESO’s Director General Audrey Azoulay on Thursday.
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| UNESCO's Paris headquarters are closed during France's lockdown. (Photo: SWAN) |
The agency
(whose headquarters in Paris remain closed, in line with French lockdown rules)
will convene a virtual meeting of the world’s culture ministers on April 22, to
discuss the impact of COVID-19 in their countries and to “identify remedial
policy measures appropriate to their various national contexts”.
This follows an
emergency online meeting of education ministers hosted on March 10, and a meeting
of science ministries’ representatives on March 30. Earlier this month, the
organization introduced a “CodeTheCurve” Hackathon to “support young
innovators, data scientists and designers across the world to develop digital
solutions to counter the COVID-19 pandemic”. The Hackathon will run until April
30, in partnership with IBM and SAP, UNESCO said.
For culture,
the organization said it was launching an international social media campaign,
#ShareOurHeritage and initiating an online exhibition of “dozens of heritage
properties across the globe”, with technical support from Google Arts &
Culture.
It will give
information via its website and social media on the impact of COVID-19 on World
Heritage sites, which are partly or fully closed to visitors in most countries because
of the pandemic.
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| The Eiffel Tower is one of many World Heritage sites closed to the public during the pandemic. (Photo: SWAN) |
Children around
the world will be invited to share drawings of World Heritage properties,
giving them the chance to “express their creativity and their connection to
heritage”, UNESCO added.
On World Art
Day, 15 April 2020, the organization will partner with musician and Goodwill
Ambassador Jean Michel Jarre to host an online debate and social media
campaign, the “ResiliArt Debate”. This will bring together “artists and key
industry actors to sound the alarm on the impact of COVID-19 on the livelihoods
of artists and cultural professionals”, UNESCO said.
It remains to
be seen how these initiatives will help the cultural and creative sectors,
which provide some 30 million jobs worldwide. Many artists have reported dire circumstances,
but many are also using their creativity to deal with the situation.
Since the
health crisis started, artists have been providing online concerts, sharing
artwork digitally and taking other steps to reach out to audiences, as “billions
of people around the world turn to culture for comfort and to overcome social
isolation”, to use UNESCO’s words.
“Now, more than ever, people need culture,” said Ernesto Ottone Ramirez, assistant UNESCO director-general for the sector.
“Now, more than ever, people need culture,” said Ernesto Ottone Ramirez, assistant UNESCO director-general for the sector.
“Culture makes
us resilient. It gives us hope. It reminds us that we are not alone,” he added.
For an earlier
article on the impact of COVID-19 on cultural and creative industries, please see: http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/03/arts-culture-trying-keep-lights-amid-covid-19/
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