This report summarizes NACDI's Players: We Are All Practitioners (2021), the second in a series of three research summits as part of the SSHRC-funded The Cultural Relations Approach to Diplomacy research project.
The report is available to download in English and Spanish.
Players: We Are All Practitioners focused on the activities of diplomatic practitioners broadly conceived. Hosted by the University of Southern California over four days in November and December 2021, the summit brought together academics and practitioners from both sides of the culture/diplomacy divide to consider the role of practitioners of a Cultural Relations approach to diplomacy as an interpersonal stance - as a set of behaviours, orientations and attitudes within a broader spectrum of cultural relations.
This was the second in a series of three research summits organized as part of the The Cultural Relations Approach to Diplomacy: Practice, Players, Policy research project. Advancing our interest in reframing current discussion around the relationship of “the cultural” to diplomacy in the study and practice of global relations, we consider the Cultural Relations approach to diplomatic activity through the three dimensions suggested in the overall project’s title. Our inaugural summit, Cultural Diplomacy as Critical Practice, in September 2020 focused on practice and feeds into players, the featured dimension of this second summit. Finally, the discussions germinating about players informs the third summit’s interest in the potential they hold to vitalize an environment conducive to the development of effective policy. The three summits were meant to facilitate the development of discussion through a sequence of exchanges that brings emerging lines of inquiry forward for consideration. They also served as focal points for networking among partners in charting directions for further research, advocacy, and policy development. The intention is to generate scholarship and practice that treats cultural diplomacy as a multidirectional, inclusive, and potentially activist practice that encompasses a diverse range of actors and their networks.
Thank you to our partner organizations: Queen's University, Royal Ontario Museum, Universidad Iberoamericana, University of Southern California Annenberg's Centre on Public Diplomacy and Centre on Communication, Leadership, and Policy, Global Affairs Canada, International Council of Museums, and Bloor Street Culture Corridor.
