Our Creative Diversity - A report of the World Commission for Culture and Development

UNESCO, World Commission on Culture and Development

In 1992, following the World Decade for Culture and Development, UNESCO and the United Nations assembled an independent group of leading economists, social scientist, artists and thinkers under the chairmanship of former United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar. This Commission was asked to explore the complex interactions between culture and development, and put forward proposals to help the international community deal with them better. This report is their collective response.

The report was designed to address diversified audience across the world, including community activists, field workers, artists and scholars to government officials and politicians. It is intended to inform the world’s opinion leaders and to influence policy makers. It shows how culture is central to all life: it shapes thinking, imagining, behaviour. Cultural and socio-cultural factors are related to global ethics, and are seen as vital factors, which affect development and collective well-being. Culture is a source of technological change, it contributes to identity and a sense of 'self', it leads to employment and participation, it is the energy and empowerment behind societies.

In this way, the publication offers a fresh perspective on the question 'Is culture the last frontier to development?' It offers tools to broaden the notion of development and to help the world’s peoples forge their own paths without losing their identity. It uproots the traditionally held view that culture is not a part of, or even a hindrance to, economic development; and instead argues that economic development in its full flowering is part of a people’s culture: 'Development divorced from its human or cultural context is growth without a soul'.

The report covers areas such as global ethics, pluralism, creativity and empowerment, the media, the young, the environment, and cultural policies. The chapter on cultural policies concludes that cultural policies need to be rethought, and refocused more specifically on the relationship between culture and development, which means taking culture’s impact on all areas of life into account.
'The challenge to humanity is to adopt new ways of thinking, new ways of acting, new ways of organising itself in society, in short, new ways of living.'

1995, UNESCO, 309pp, ISBN 92 3 1034235

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