The Edinburgh International Culture Summit happens every two years and is a part of the Edinburgh Festivals month in August. This years summit took place on 22-24th August and The Stove (inc Midsteeple Quarter) was delighted and honoured to be ask to address one of the break-out sessions of the conference.
The Summit takes place in the parliament at Holyrood and is chaired by the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament – Ken Mackintosh MSP. Our First Minister attended the first day and gave a speech of welcome to delegates where she highlighted the growing world status of Dundee as a cultural destination. The programme includes public sessions with keynote speakers – but also private break-out sessions where ministers are able to discuss new ideas without fear of being quoted in teh media. It was one of these sessions that featured The Stove’s Matt Baker, who gave a 10 minute presentation on how artists had been involved in community-led regeneration in Dumfries and then sat on a panel discussion with representatives of the Altofest from Naples and the Head of Arts and Culture from Google – the Panel was chaired by Martin Rose of the British Council.
The overall theme of the Summit was ‘Culture – Connecting Peoples and Places’ – this was developed in three themes (one each for the three days) ‘Culture in a Networked World’, ‘Culture and Investment’ and ‘Culture and Wellbeing’. The Stove was part of the ‘Culture in Networked World’ theme and our Policy Round Table was ‘Re-imagining and Re-connecting to Culture’ – during which Matt had to tell the assembled Ministers that the word ‘culture’ is banned in The Stove – as it just serves to exclude so many of the people in our local community.
