"Cultural Diplomacy: A Danish Perspective"
A Lecture by Maiken Tandgaard Derno, Head of Culture and Public Diplomacy, Permanent Mission of Denmark to the United Nations

(Washington D.C., June 26th, 2014)

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Biography

Maiken Tandgaard Derno serves as the Cultural Attaché of Denmark, Vice-Consul and Head of Culture, Press and Public Diplomacy at the Consulate General of New York City. She started her appointment in August 2008. Prior to this, she was a research fellow in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen and taught English Literature and Cultural Theory at Columbia University from September 2004 to June 2008.

Besides her academic career, Maiken Derno is the author, editor and contributor of numerous books and journal articles including 9/11: Ten Years After (Aarhus University Press 2011); Bad Music: The Music We Love to Hate (Routledge Press, 2004); Trafficking Boundaries: A Journal of Feminist Theory (New York University/Sheridan Press, 2003) and Brødums Danske Lov (Brødums Forlag, 2000). Maiken Derno holds a B.A. and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Copenhagen and was a Fulbright Scholar in Literary Theory from the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

“Cultural Diplomacy: A Danish Perspective”

A Lecture by Maiken Tandgaard Derno, Head of Culture and Public Diplomacy, Permanent Mission of Denmark to the United Nations

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and first of all of course I would love to extend my sincere thanks to Mark and to the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy for inviting the Permanent Mission of Consulate of Denmark to be part of this Symposium, very important and very timely, as Doctor Babuna has already pointed out. I am very happy and very honored to represent the Danish Government on this occasion and I look very much forward to the dialogue with so many interesting speakers and participants. Whereas Mr. Babuna has just given us a very strong argument about why to engage in cultural diplomacy, I will focus my presentation on some of the guiding principles of how we do it and try to give you a snap shot of how Denmark in 2014 is doing Cultural Diplomacy around the world. In order to do that, I'm going to begin my presentation by quoting Denmark's current Minister for Culture, Marianne Jelved (and this is the lady you see up here): she's a very experienced politician, with a very long time key player of successful coalition governments in Denmark . Jelved said:

"International cultural exchange is important because we often learn about ourselves when we meet the world around us. Art and culture have the ability to spark dialogue between cultures" and of course this is a very simple statement, that most people can probably agree on, yet it contains a profoundly true observation.

It requires that we look quiet deeply into ourselves and ask difficult questions about who we are as a nation and as a people, and what are our core values. It is only when we engage in intercultural dialogue with the world around us that we really get to know ourselves. And so the Minister also precedes to point out that (and I quote again): "Denmark's international cultural exchange activities cover all the arts and the cultural heritage sector. Artistic quality and relevance are the main criteria for all projects and applications for funding, which Denmark chooses to support, whether nationally or internationally. And so what, I would like to ask, happens when we take a closer look at ourselves?

These are the Danes, as you may know, Denmark came in the first place as the happiest country in the world in the 2013 UN Happiness Report; these happiness indexes seem to multiply in recent years. Also in 2014 the International Global Affairs Magazine, the Monocle, has once again named Copenhagen to be the most livable city in the world. So, what is behind all this: the happy people, the most livable city? What is the cost of this reputed happiness and why does Denmark consistently score high in international surveys of livability? And I can assure all of you (I don't know how many of you have been to Copenhagen) that both of these top ratings may be very hard to believe in, if you find yourself among early morning communities on a public bus in Copenhagen on a very rainy and grey day, you look for these happy people and maybe you don't see them, just next to you. But by posting such basic yet difficult questions,  there is still key to understand our place in the world, our currency and leverage in the cultural diplomacy context.

I will speak just a little bit further about some of these values that Danes are ventured to find when they look in wit. In Denmark, the process of self-examination in the face of cultural exchange with the international community. has led to the identification of the following core values and national trade marks  in recent times and I have six of them up here. I will go over them very quickly.

First of all, our welfare system. The basic principle of the Danish welfare model often refers to our Scandinavian welfare system model. All citizens have equal rights to social security, within the Danish Welfare System, a number of services are available for citizens free of charge. This means that for instance the Danish health and education systems are free to all. The Danish welfare model is subsidized by the State and as a result Denmark has one of the highest taxation levels in the world. Yet the Danes are very proud of their system, we actually pay our taxes happily, which often comes as a surprise to specifically Americans I would say and which seems to play a key role on these surveys on happiness: this sense of security.

Secondly, we honored the core value of equality. Denmark is usually recognized by its social balance, equality and social mobility, low level of corruption and transparency, high minimum wages and high levels of unemployment benefits, which form the basis of our security system, where workforce can move from sector to sector with relative ease.

Thirdly, the creative component (or design, as we call it broadly). Modern design, as many of you may know, is part of the Danish national identity, Danish everyday life, it's in our DNA, so to speak. Many Danish products have become archetypes, so icons of the 20th century design. Many of you may now some of our design greats: some of them are in this building, such as Finn Juhl,  who designed the Trusteeship Council here at the UN, which has been recently renovated (I will come back to that). But Denmark is also home to a new and vibrant generation of young designers, working in a much broader field, including digital design, design experience and design thinking at large.

The fourth core value is our happiness, which I've already mentioned. The happiness factor have possible reasons for this , such as our security and social security system. Happy people, we propose, live longer, they're more productive, they earn more and they become better citizens. Wellbeing should be developed both for its own sake, but also for its social, economic and political side effects.

The fifth component here is the core value of sustainability. Our capital city, Copenhagen, sports an ambitious plan to become carbon neutral by 2025 and Denmark as a whole has a government-mandated roadmap to become fuel free by 2050. It's very ambitious plan, that we are always happy to share. Copenhagen assumes its share of responsibility for climate change, with the Copenhagen 2025 climate plan. We want to show that it is possible to combine the economic growth, development and increase quality of life with the reduction of CO2 emissions. It is all about finding solutions that are smarter, greener, healthier and more profitable.

Sixth, the last core value is business and our labor force. I spoke a little bit about the Flexicurity, which is quiet unique even in the European Union context.

Denmark has the world's most flexible market and one of the most highest levels of education. Combined with virtually nonexistent corruption, this provides the recipe for very good investment climate and, as a consequence, that mark world class expertise within a wide field of business areas including life sciences, ICD clean-tech and a merit time industry. So, just to sum up briefly, these six core values are, as to speak, what Danes are finding these days in looking at Denmark is very eager to communicate and share when looking out to engage international and local communities around the world.

So this is just a little bit to form the background to talk about how we do international cultural exchange. In Denmark in recent years we have seen  a very broad consensus around the goals and purposes of international cultural exchange. The overall aim of the government's strategic action plan dated back to 2010 increase the max cultural exchange with foreign countries and strengthen the internationalization of Danish cultural life as such in Denmark. This strategic plan must practically contribute to the fulfillment of four purposes and I've listed them behind me here. The first is development and renewal of Danish arts and culture or art for art's sake, you could say. Art is an intrinsic value. Second is promotion of Denmark as a country (nation branding). The third is to further our cultural exports: the art scene also as a cultural and economic factor and fourth is furthering intercultural dialogue. Some of these topics that we have heard about before, in the previous talk.

The purposes are defined as having equal value, and this is something quiet new in a Danish and also European context, I think, to define these four goals as having equal value in all of them.  I will propose the intrinsicate value of arts and culture self. So, just to give you an idea of how this works in terms of institutions. The implementation of these overall goals, I'm sure by what we call the international cultural panel, which was established first time in 2010 and here we have the structure: on top we have the Minister for Culture, the Government, then we have the Panel and it's steering committee, below these we have a number of working groups which work in specific cultural fields, and at the very bottom we have all the very wide area of cultural institutions and individual artists that are out there working on specific projects, to engage the world. The panel is part of a conscious effort to streamline Denmark's cultural diplomacy knowledge and resources, to increase accessibility and to ensure a maximum of coordination within the different government bodies and institutions working in this field. It works both top down, as you see here with the strategy and the action plan and all the fundamental principles of collaboration to which I'll return in a minute. But it works most importantly bottom up, when individual institutions and artists propose projects and apply for funding.

So the whole idea is to create this dynamics between the various factors within the field. The panel is supplemented by a website: www.danisharts.dk and I encourage all of you to go visit it, to learn more from yourself. This serves as a single point entry for all public arts funding in Denmark. And even though we are only 5.6 million people, we have our multi-billion-dollar arts funding budget for culture, which is heavily funded by the government. All the different art homes are represented by different centers and institutes along with knowledge and research tools on this website. So it's really impressive that so many actors have been fused under this one portal. The International cultural panel is mostly meant to be a coordinating entity and a supplement to the Danish Arts Foundation, which has 12 specific subcommittees, which is the main government body which distributes public arts funding in Denmark. There exists (we are very proud of it) a length principle between the panel, the people that divide strategies and action plans, and the foundation that gives out the funding. These are completely separated.

When we look abroad Denmark's international cultural exchange is represented by the following entities. We have the Danish Cultural Institute, which was founded in 1940 and is an independent institution with branches in 10 different countries: Benelux, Brazil, China, Estonia, Latvia etc. you see them all lined up here. The Institute both generates and supports cultural activities in Denmark and abroad, most of the work is done abroad for the front branches. The Institute is founded on a broad conceptual platform that embraces arts, culture and society: areas that unite people across cultures, promote international understanding and facilitate communication. The main focus for the current institute is co-creation, meaning that we don't just send our artists out to present abroad, most of the projects that are funded here are co-creation with local artists in different countries. It is very important always to have this local supply and demand structure. It focuses on innovation and on children, because children are the world citizens of the future and we find it very important to reach children for a variety of offering programs all over the world. So, using culture as a common starting point, the Institute creates platforms for knowledge, sharing the exchange of ideas and experiences and long-lasting hopeful relations. These activities are diverse, from concerts to exhibitions, conferences field trips, visiting programs, theater, film, dance.. In this way culture plays a very active role in the daily life of many people providing personal experience for one and all.

A part from the institute (and I'll come back to the fact that we don't have one here in New York, it's a country choice), we have the CKU (the Danish Center for Culture and Development), which works both in Denmark but specifically in the Middle East and Africa (West and East Africa). It is essential that it does big festivals over the images of Africa. There have been a recurrent festival that we've done for more than 10 years now in Copenhagen every other year, but again if focus a lot in co-creation in these different regions of the world in assisting artists from developing countries, in making their ways into the art markets of the Western world also.

Next, there is the Foreign Service with 105 embassies, consulates and trade missions. I'm myself part of one of one of these here in New York, which is one of the main focal areas.

Then we have a vast number of local networks, I'll just mention the local network that we found here in North America, which we call the "Cultural Front-Runner Network", and which consists of more than 75 individuals and institutions across the country, who volunteer in being ambassadors for Denmark and assisting us in furthering a lot of arts and cultures in different local communities.

So, with such a fine-tuned network, even a small country like Denmark can reach very far and potentially have a great impact. The current action plan for the International Culture Panel focuses on the BRICS countries and the Middle East, so we always have a geographical focus for every three-years period. We also have a thematic focus for the panel and of course this is in part determining which projects get funding. We focus on sustainability projects, children and youths projects, on dialogue democracy and involvement of local people, so when we do for instance cultural projects in Egypt. We have recently worked a lot with art and public spaces, because we want to reach some of the people and audiences that don't usually get into the public spheres, like women and children. Again we have devised special strategies to reach those target groups and coax them into public space, so that they can be part of those special initiatives.

I am coming to the most important slide of my presentation here, which talks about the actual guiding principles of how we do this. So, for the last 10 to 15 years, we have seen a virtual revolution in ways in which Denmark does international cultural exchange in cultural diplomacy abroad. Previously the main focus would have been on handpicking what the Danish government would think are the best artists and cultural projects, shipping them abroad and trying to make a big immediate impact or splash, in terms of big festivals, presentations, high audience numbers, press coverage etc. It was really mostly a top-down affair, in which artists and local players had very little say. The last few projects in North America to employ this principle was "Super Danish" in Toronto, in the mid 90's and "Danish Wave" here in New York in 1999. After these projects came a period of reflection and inward-looking, resulting in forward evaluation, though choices, where artists and audiences were heard and where a series of entire new principles were developed. There are five of these principles, which are up here behind me and are guiding principles of how Denmark acts in terms of cultural diplomacy in the world. With the strategic action plan of 2014 to 2016, the cultural panel has agreed upon a set of 5 shared principles of cultural exchange.

The first principle is the understanding that the implementation of any initiative of project, first and foremost must be based on high cultural or artistic quality. We never compromise on quality or professionalism, not even for political or strategic reasons, so quality is always first.

The second principle is to ensure that cultural exchange projects are embraced by the audiences in the recipient countries. This is done by securing outside-interest, reciprocity and locals, as a part of every project. So, we must listen and respond to an actual local demand, otherwise there's no meaning and reason to go in and do something.

The third principle is to make sure that cultural exchange initiatives include a measure of longevity. This is done by including long-time perspectives, sharing of knowledge and network organizations in the planning and organization of any exchange program. So we don't want to just come in, do a big festival and be out again,  and not follow up. It's all about building these local networks.

The fourth project is to base each project on the people involved whenever possible and when projects seek to strengthen the cooperation between involved agents. This is done by promoting a bottom-up approach and facilitation of agent-to-agent cooperation.

Finally it is the fifth agreed-upon principle to ensure high visibility and impact for any cultural exchange project, because otherwise if nobody knows about it, there's no point in doing it. This is achieved by focusing on target groups and visibility in the communication of projects.

So, what you can see here if you step back a little bit and take a broader perspective, is that the method of conducting cultural diplomacy in Denmark and other Nordic Countries especially, has changed from an icon-based to a value-based form of storytelling. So, though the old myths of Denmark as a fairy tale country populated by kings, queens and freedom fighters, they need to be supplemented  by modern stories about Denmark as a resourceful country, which is a leader in the six areas previously presented, namely welfare, quality, happiness or livability, creativity, sustainability and business. These are the values and platforms in which we want to share and engage in a mutual understanding and network building anywhere in the world, so that we go out and engage.

Here in North America we have noticed good hooks, because of course there are huge differences in doing cultural projects in very developed countries or consciences such as North American, or other places such as some of the emerging countries. One of the good hooks that we found here is for example New Nordic food. You know, food is an amazing tool of cultural diplomacy. The ritual and the social context of the meal makes people talk, engage in conversation and share on in different ways. So a lot of our arts projects have recently gotten a food component.

Also climate adaptation and sustainability basically undercut and crosscut most of what we do. This is  particularly true about arts, design, architecture, city planning, and I was speaking a little early about the bike lanes here in New York City, so the whole green perspective is almost always present. I can mention here in Manhattan (I don't know if you have been following the rebuild up by design competition), post super storm sandy and some other federal funds to rebuild and make New York more climate adaptable. We just had a Danish architectural firm that won with the bit "U-Project", that is going to change the looks and the make-up of all Manhattan and make it a lot more livable and interesting.

So, how do we work? Denmark does not, as I mentioned before, have a cultural institute  in  New York, such as Germans have the Goethe Institute and many other European countries or countries throughout the world. This is a very conscious decision because we would rather hang up with the locals. We don't want to isolate our arts in one of those tall, beautiful, cool buildings. We want to be out there in the local art scenes. We no longer, or very rarely, program our big festivals and events, instead we offer counseling to Danish and US artists and cultural institutions. We do matchmaking, we engage in partnerships, we focus on strategic communication, both print and digital, we use social media very proactively, we assist with funding, that is usually a big deal: if you come with some money on the table and usually there are local funds too, so great things will happen. Of course we still program official visits of royalties, ministries etc. We always try to refrain from building up a whole cluster of scaffolding of artificial events surrounding, rather we try to integrate whatever we do in the arts projects that are already happening out there.

So, we are at the end and I'll just speak a few minutes before I open up to questions about what we do in New York, because of course New York is one of the leading cultural destinations in the world and it's a very exciting city to do cultural diplomacy. The city has a great potential with 2500 institutions of arts and culture, a lot of them leading in the world. There's a great concentration of world media here, which makes it a very good platform to engage in ongoing dialogue. So the keynotes for success here are to focus in what we do, we can't compete in all fronts all over the city, so we choose our projects carefully. We always work with clear criteria and roots in the local communities. And I will end my presentation here by just briefly going through a few of these cases, of what we have done recently. Last year we had in Washington DC the big Nordic Festival at the Kennedy Center Nordic Cool. It is a big festival and it wasn't organized or planned by the Danes, but entirely by the local curators at the Kennedy Center. So we worked with hands-off in terms of what artists and what art projects were presented. This is also a great example that Denmark is a great country but we have developed over the years a very strong brand with our Nordic neighbors: Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland. We have begun doing more and more projects with them, because we feel that we have a very hard-hitting brand and we share those six values and a lot of history. So partnering up in cultural diplomacy on a regional level really makes a lot of sense, also to gain more traction.

A reasonable example here in New York was the "Pen World Voices Literature Festival", which always worked for the freedom of speech. We organized it as a good example of how we use food and the ritual of the meal. We invited a lot of Nordics authors and paired them up with American authors, so the focus was not on the presentation but on the dialogue and on the conversation that happened then. Every feast happened around a meal, when we served sustainable new Nordic food.

Here at the UN, we have just completed rather grand scale design project, here upstairs and in the consulate, the conference Building. In 2013 the UN building was renovated as Capital of the UN Master Plan Project, which is still ongoing (they are now working at the G8). On this occasion the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Denmark joined forces to restore the Trusteeship Council Chamber, which was designed by very young and upcoming Nordic designers, Finn Juhl, in the early 50's. We restored it to its original ideas and design principles, and today the UN Chambers considered a masterpiece of Finn Juhl's carrier and the Chamber stands as real treasure of Danish design architecture abroad. One of the main reasons for doing this was also that the UN of course since the 50's have grown, the number of the member states has gone from 50 to almost 200 today. What we did was not just to bring this back to what it looked like in the 50's, we called a design competition, to involve some of Denmark's young and upcoming emerging designers. So what you will see, if you get the chance to go upstairs at the Trusteeship Council Chamber, which is rather stunning and beautiful, is a mix of the old and the new art design. It is all made in sustainable art materials and it has a very organic outlook, representing some of these Nordic values. Finn Juhl wanted everybody, from all the nations, to sit in a kind of a whole-shoes shape, so nobody was at the end of the table and everybody had to be able to be at a high level contact, while discussing the very serious issues of decolonization, which was the main purpose of the Trusteeship Council. So we did the grand opening last year with our Crown Princess and with the Secretary General. We had the world press, we had an amazing coverage and it was simply a joy to work with the UN and the capital of the master plan on this project.

So, lastly, another food project that we made here in New York at the Union Square (the New York's biggest Greenmarket, that has about 600.000 visitors on a busy Saturday in October). We invited three Danish famous chefs, we made them come over, they sourced all of their produces, vegetables and sea food from the local Greenmarket and the farms in Staten Island, Long Island and upstate New York. We served thousands of free food samples to New Yorkers, that could come up, talk with the chefs, share a meal and have exciting conversations about the whole field, that is behind that. So, food really has proved a great  public diplomacy tool for us, I can highly recommend it. It is everywhere in the world, we've done food projects it in the Middle East, in Africa, in the Southeast Asia. We are doing a lot of food diplomacy, that's a new concept that maybe you guys can take up, because it really brings people together across cultures. So with these words, I'm ending the presentation and I am very happy to take questions from you. Thank you.

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