Wrap up of the course

Hello. We have now arrived at the end of this course. We hope you enjoyed it. And we hope you learned a lot about cultural diplomacy in a multi-polar world. You will remember that we discussed the origins of the practise and the concept when culture first started being part of cooperation between states, for instance, for education purposes. You now know what is soft power, a central concept in cultural diplomacy. Soft power was coined by Joseph Nye in the 1990s. And it means the entire influence that the state can exercise on other states through its cultural products and services. This concept has now been softened and expanded. We talk about transnational interest cultural relations and dialogue.

Artists now work in connection to different places, and at the same time, and, thus, it is better to speak about transnational rather than international cultural relations. Cultural diplomacy between countries today has taken also forms of joint cultural years. Remember the example of China and Qatar in 2016? Cultural diplomacy needs not be necessarily between states. We have very interesting example of cities or regions that develop their own cultural diplomacy. You will remember the case of Quebec in Canada. We also discussed about how cultural diplomacy can develop within a world region. We looked at Francophonie, so countries that are brought together by their use of the French language.

Or we looked at ASEAN in Southeast Asia and their own projects of regional cultural cooperation. Other actors that we discussed, and you will, we hope, remember, is the role of private companies. Wanda, a China-based company, that has at times become a global player in the creative industries. Cultural diplomacy can also be a form of reinventing national memory, treating difficult parts of the national past. This was the case of the project of the Cambodia NGO, who looked at the Khmer Rouge genocide in cooperation with an American foundation in NGO and a related transnational exhibition. Naturally, one of the most important examples that we have today of regional cultural diplomacy strategy is that of the European Union.

The European Union in these recent years has given particular prominence to the cultural aspect of its international relations approach. We looked at the role, however, of the different member states that have a long tradition in cultural diplomacy, such as Britain and the British Council, Germany and the Goethe Institute, France and the Institut Francais, or the Alliance Francaise. Indeed, you will recall that there can be tensions between the different strategies and the different traditions of these member states. But, also, we have some very interesting examples of excellent cooperation, like EUNIC, EUNIC, the European Union National Institutes for Culture.

We hope you also recall the case of Tunisia and the big project of cultural cooperation that EUNIC and the European Commission has engaged in Tunisia. Thank you. We look forward to seeing you again in FutureLearn. If you enjoyed this course, we hope you have a look at our other courses on culture, cities, and heritage.