Gender and culture are both key elements and cross-disciplinary issues for the development of the Southern Mediterranean and advocacy is a priority for the civil society actors who work in these fields. For this reason, synergies have been established among the CSO WINS project, one of the Foundation’s initiative which is dedicated to strengthening the capacity of civil society organizations to advocate in favour of women in the economic, political, social or cultural sectors, through peer-to-peer learning and networking, and the Med Culture Programme in order to share methodologies, to exchange information on successful practices, and to coordinate capacity building’s activities.

From April 25 to 28, the Med Culture program held the meeting of the Regional Platform on Higher Education and Vocational Education Training in artistic disciplines and in cultural policies and management. The activity took place in Rabat at the Université Mohammed V de Rabat - Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines.

The aims of this Regional Platform include, among others:

• To exchange and network amongst academics, trainers, cultural practitioners, and institutions with the view to develop effective partnerships in cultural management and cultural policies training/educational programmes in the region.
• To address quality of curricula and training programmes in cultural management and policies and artistic disciplines, taking into account the changing needs of the culture sector as well as the crosscutting dimension of culture - sustainable development, human rights, etc.
• To raise awareness of the value of education in arts and culture and the necessity to address it within a formal and informal framework at national level.

The Regional platform meeting gathered representatives of organisations and networks that have played an important role in the region in the field of higher education and training. Guest participants were invited to provide witness accounts of their involvement in training in cultural policies and management in the region, promoting their own recommendations on the subject. Several themes were discussed such as: the development of curricula and the definition of skills pertaining to the sector; advocacy as a learning experience; innovative educational initiatives; the integration of youth in the workforce; and the role of the media in advocating for culture.

In this occasion, some lessons learnt from the CSO WINS project, which is supported by the European Union, were shared, and the importance to take into account culture and arts as powerful means to break gender stereotypes and to eliminate negative perceptions of women was acknowledged. Moreover, female creators and cultural managers can suffer a double discrimination as artists and women. 

To know the associations which are involved in the CSO WINS project, especially those which use arts and creativity to mobilize the general public and raise their awareness on urgent issues such as violence against women, click here.

To learn more about the meeting, click here.