“There are currently 400 students abroad, a part of an ambitious plan to send 5,000 students to learn and share knowledge in many emerging areas, including digital data-based economy and artificial intelligence. We have also a Study in Iraq Programme where many students from abroad are being hosted in our universities,” said the minister of higher education and scientific research at the recent Baghdad Dialogue event, organised at the University of Baghdad, by CARPO Institute and the Iraqi Institute for Dialogue. This vision from Iraq, which has 6,000 years cradle-of-civilisation legacy of Mesopotamian knowledge is an inspiration for other societies around the world to engage in cultural diplomacy. I would argue that many disconnections we are witnessing in every day’s news, in economy and politics, all stem from a cultural disconnection than any other disconnections. We need this today more than ever because of our abundance of constructive connectedness and the urgent need to shift our focus away from destructive conflicts.
What does cultural diplomacy look like?
Cultural diplomacy is much more than official talks about culture. The people-to-people open expression and engagements about knowledge, arts, literature and creativity constitute constructive, interwind steps in a cultural diplomacy roadmap that could bring us closer together. To achieve this our world needs to invest more in cultural exchanges, as much as we invest in construction, technologies and food security.
As the case with building any ecosystem it all started with talents. For the Sultanate of Oman, this means investing in the implementation and scaling up of recently shared Creative Industries Roadmap, drawn by an energetic, dynamic team of creatives supervised by the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Youth. This roadmap calls, among other steps, to invest in building the capacity of all creatives, including authors, artists, designers, developers, translators, gamers, chefs among other cultural talents. Building the capacity of such talents will lead to valuable socio-economic gains including creating intellectual property rights - IPRs and useful knowledge for humanity.
Every rial invested in culture returns as valuable knowledge, financial and brand equity for the whole society. Today’s much revered Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, Mesoptomian, Islamic, African, European and American civilisations have all made literary, arts and science contributions that made our lives better. This is why establishing venture capital funds that startup and scale-up cultural projects into roadmaps are worth inclusion into annual performance budgets.
In the world of entrepreneurship, an entrepreneurship and startups ecosystem’s progress is as good as its smooth flowing connectedness and engagement between its ecosystem players. Similarity, talents capacity building and funding to literature, arts and knowledge stakeholders need to nurture meaningful performance Objectives and Key Results system, accompanied with Key Performance Indicators or KPIs.
Our connectedness need to nurture our socio-economic progress, this is why cultural diplomacy roadmaps lead to a better world. Simple initiatives such as 'Study in Oman' could be great first steps in a road worth travelling by.
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