Digital tools and cultural diplomacy

Well, I think the digital revolution has changed a lot of the underlying conditions for institutional cultural diplomacy. There have to have been adjustments to delivering services through digital means. And actually, I think probably the most important thing, is the way in which finding a voice and finding those who will listen to the voice has become increasingly competitive. So it needs to adapt to changing patterns of consumption, to the use of mobile devices as a way of accessing content, and at the same time, retain some of the traditional dimensions of delivering services through face-to-face interaction through running courses events and all the rest of it. So it’s really been a very complex kind of development.

And if you think about institutional cultural diplomacy, this is, fundamentally, something that is financed through states. And therefore, the shape of that diplomacy is dictated by the awareness of those who are running the programmes of the changing complex environment within which cultural diplomacy finds itself.