The Power of Culture

Support for culture in Africa, Asia and Latin American is not the exclusive right of governments. Sizeable private funds with their own cultural policy, such as the Gulbenkian foundation, are operating throughout the world.

Papua New Guinea is known to be the most culturally diverse country in the world. More than eight hundred different population groups with their own language live in the archipelago. The country's government faces a complicated challenge: which language will unify the country?

The eyes of the culture world are on South Africa as the country prepares to host the fourth World Summit on Arts and Culture in 2009. Mike van Graan speaks with Nicholas Motsatse, chairperson of the National Arts Council in South Africa.

On 1 March 2007, Marianne Bhalotra passed her position as coordinator of the Hubert Bals Fund to Bianca Taal. She looks back on twelve years Hubert Bals Fund and views its future from the perspective of the new co-funding program Medefinancierings-systeem 2009-2012 (MFS).

A national identity that celebrates and promotes Fiji's cultural diversity and traditional culture. With this vision the government of Fiji, an archipelago of three hundred islands in the Pacific Ocean, in 2003 gave a new boost to art funding.

Is there any African culture to talk about considering the many foreign influences experienced over the years? Breyten Breytenbach, writer and director of Senegal's Gorée Institute, shares some doubts.