Cultural Diplomacy – Aspen Institute-style

The Aspen Institute took on an ambitious project this fall. (I’m sure this is how a number of their program descriptions could start…) The inaugural Aspen Cultural Diplomacy Forum was a concept that came to life this past weekend. The institute’s ambition (apologies to Walter Isaacson and his eloquent welcoming letter in the program for which I’m abbreviating) was to focus on cultural dynamics in times of conflict, to examine past and current practices, to debate policies affecting culture and to look at mobilization of resources in media, arts, culture, and technology. No small task in 2½ days. The format was varied by design to allow speakers and the audience to engage, concur, disagree, and contemplate.

I was pleased Sister Cities International was invited and able to present our story. In addition to participating in the forum, I was a speaker on a panel titled, “Strengthening Cultural Diplomacy.” It was moderated by Elliot Gerson Executive Vice President for Policy and Public programs and International Partnerships for the Aspen Institute. My coconspirator on the panel was Sharon Memis, director of the British Council USA. We had the dubious task being the last panel of the forum and right after lunch but with all of the ideas presented, it became a terrific moment to share the sister cities model.

Below you’ll find a snapshot of my comments to on the panel. (One caveat, it’s not a word for word transcript per se, but a firm mix of my prepared remarks, responses to questions, and what I actually remember saying.)

Gerson: We’ve heard from so many different organizations so far during this forum. Yours is yet another intersection for our participants to think about - tell us about Sister Cities International.

Madden: Thank you Elliot, I want to thank the Aspen Institute for including Sister Cities International in this forum and hosting this event. We’ve had a spirited discussion. My brief overview is really for those of you who don’t know about our road signs. Undoubtedly, as you drive throughout Europe or the United States, you’ll see these signs "Sister City of Columbus, Ohio" and so on. In Europe it's known as town twinning. But what do we really do? We are a cultural understanding organization, and in the broadest terms, we are about world peace and life-changing experiences. The first, admittedly, as been rather elusive for us especially the past few years but the latter comes second nature. We have 700 U.S. cities partnered with nearly 2,300 cities abroad in 135 countries. It’s a global network that grown from a simple idea that President Eisenhower had in 1956 – get the diplomats and bureaucrats out of the way and have ordinary citizens travel abroad to experience other cultures – walk the streets, visit the sites, eat the food – and have them come to the United States to experience American culture and they’ll find that we have more in common than we have different. The best ambassadors of our culture and society are our citizens.

We work in four areas: arts and culture, humanitarian assistance, sustainable and economic development and youth and education. The work by our city members are short- and long-term projects, exchanges and public programs – so like one of our speakers mentioned yesterday we are an organization with a role in both external cultural understanding and internal cultural awareness. So you’ll see all types of sister city projects from clean water programs and professional and technical exchanges to bringing a youth choir from South Africa and film or food festivals in the U.S.

I think the power of our network resides with two strengths: First, these are long-term relationships between the communities. We liken them to marriage. The people in the cities really get to know each other, build relationships, have a sense of the other community’s needs and strengths which allows the projects to take a much longer view. The work is two-way not just U.S. outward. Second, it’s the partnership model we use. We are the poster child for public-private partnership with citizens partnering with local government. To get our work done our local programs work with mayors, local government, business, academia, nonprofit and social organizations depending on the project or exchange.

Gerson: We don’t really think about the role of cities in diplomacy. It sounds like your organization sees a role for cities. Tell us more about this concept.

Madden: We’ve heard a great deal at the forum so far about institutional cultural diplomacy – very top-down thinking. Let me make a case for a more bottom-up. Since our beginning we’ve been using the word citizen diplomat to describe our work but more recently I’ve started to describe it as Community Diplomacy. We are a grassroots organization. Citizens are the engine that makes our work happen but the role of communities and cities is changing. What we see at Sister Cities International is a growing power and influence of cities and mayors. Half of the world’s population lives in cities – this is a relatively new phenomenon. Half of those cities are populations under 500,000 – so they aren’t just the megacities. The migration patterns aren’t changing – more people are going to be living in cities. This is an important trend. We are here talking about Culture in Conflict/Culture on the Move – culture and conflict manifest themselves at the local community level and mayors and local government have a tremendous influence on how that culture is treated. Look at war-torn or regions of conflict…it’s cities that provide survival for local citizen and with that, they are responsible for the local culture and traditions. In the U.S. we’ve seen a growing influence of mayors. When our country opted out of Kyoto, the mayors got together and developed a climate protection agreement. I think there are nearly 1,000 mayors in the U.S. who have signed on to it. We’ve seen this in local arts funding as well. At the national level it’s well documented that the U.S. does not have a support system like European countries for the arts, but mayors having been adding funding. They see the value of arts in their communities. If the federal government won’t act, the mayors said, we will. Equally important to note, is mayor are much more accountable to their constituents than national elected officials. So their response, often, is in direct response to citizen needs and interests.

Additionally, I think it’s important to draw youth into this conversation. We heard this morning about the aging of Spain and Japan’s populations but I believe the statistic is 75% of the population of the Middle East is under 30 years old and in a few years almost 60% of individuals living in slums are 18 or under. These are statistics that can’t be ignored if we want culture to flourish. How do we engage youth in this dialogue?

Gerson: We heard a lot of opinions here in the past few days [Laughing.] But is there something that hasn’t been said that you think we should think about in the mix of this event? What’s missing?

Madden: We aren’t going to bomb or invade our way into a new positive world opinion of America. We need all kinds of cultural diplomacy to accomplish this. But, what we haven’t heard is about the positive legacy of the George W. Bush administration. Many of you know that our strategic engagement with the world is known as the three Ds: Defense, Diplomacy, and Development. The last D is one that we don’t hear about or see in front page headlines. In the last 8 years the Bush Administration has doubled the overall funding of aid globally. It has quadrupled aid funding to Africa. This is tremendous. You’ve probably heard of the President’s Malaria Initiative and the AIDS program. The AIDS funding alone is staggering – the most money in world history ever committed to stop the spread of a single disease. Sadly, this is overshadowed by other foreign policy decisions, some of which has been raised earlier in the forum, but my hope for the Obama administration is they not only build on this, but consider reorganizing our Ds – I’d suggest to the transition team: Diplomacy, Development, and Defense.

With the exception of Q&A, this concluded my remarks. Following my comments, Sharon Memis offered an overview of the British Council’s programs and her wisdom to the forum participants. She shared some terrific insight about working strategically especially in partnerships, the value of evaluation, and the idea of working at arms-length from government. The panel was then opened up to Q&A and audience comments.

All in all, it was a tremendous first step to get the key actors in the room. Global voices were heard. Opinions were debated and discussed. A wide variety of approaches were presented and, I think, we saw the richness and the complexity of cultural diplomacy. We are at the beginning of the beginning.