UNESCO invite you to participate in an online discussion dedicated to "Funding Culture, Managing the Risk: limits and opportunities for development cooperation" that will take place from 16 March to 6 April 2010.

Organized by UNESCO’s Culture Sector, the discussion is part of a series of initiatives conceived to further the culture and development agenda in the area of international development policy and programming, and to catalyze and help develop the international community’s policy, advocacy and action in this critical area.

This online discussion will focus on a specific area of concern within culture and development the perception of risks involved in cultural investments. Themes and questions will be provided to participants who will be invited to discuss 1) reasons for (mis)perceptions of the risks involved in investing in culture, 2) means to demystify and challenge such (mis)perceptions; and 3) strategies to increase the culture and development agenda’s visibility in development circles.

The discussion will be organized around the following three themes.

Week 1 (16 - 22 March) - Risk of Funding Culture: A Myth or a Reality?

Week 2 (23 - 29 March) - Dealing with Risk: What Works?

Week 3 (30 March - 6 April) - How to encourage investments in the culture sector?

"It has become fashionable to toss copyright, patents, and trademarks—three separate and different entities involving three separate and different sets of laws—into one pot and call it “intellectual property”. The distorting and confusing term did not arise by accident. Companies that gain from the confusion promoted it. The clearest way out of the confusion is to reject the term entirely. "

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

"What do we mean by ‘freedom’? Should Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) necessarily be powered by radical politics of ownership and collaboration? Or is the latching of “Free Software” ideological baggage limiting the full transformative power of “Open Source”. How are these questions informed by licenses? Are some licenses more open than others? More ethical than others? This emotional debate has been in the heart of FLOSS from its early days and has created camps and animosities within the community.

"There is genius, dynamism and innovation in capitalism. Unfortunately, standard market theory does not properly allow it to be unlocked." argue Will Hutton and Philippe Schneider.

"Stimulated by the 'New Labour' government in the 1990s, the economic role and function of the UK's creative industries aroused international interest. Chris Smith, Britain's New Labour Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, confirmed early in his ministry that the creative industries were a growth sector of the UK economy, saying 'It is incumbent on the government, in partnership with industry, to take active steps to promote economic growth in the creative and cultural sector.

Adam Curtis (maker of The Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self, The Mayfair Set, Pandora's Box..) recently blogged a response to a New Statesman article (http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2010/02/letter-inflation-economics-mpc) debunking economist jargon and nonesense.