From November 24 to 27, 2006, 39 people representing 36 cultural networks based in 23 countries met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as part of the second Forum Cultural Mundial in Brazil.

We modestly wished to “make a first step”: to discover some diverse cultural networks on all continents; to make contact and learn their concerns; to map some characteristics of networks (size, funding, behaviour, members, artistic disciplines, projects….); to share skills, imagine joint solutions to common problems. IETM's interest is its continuing investment in studying the behaviour and evaluation of cultural networking. 

Soledad Dominguez, based at the FCM office in Rio, was employed by FCM to coordinate the meeting on the Brazil side. Mary Ann DeVlieg, Secretary General of IETM (international network for contemporary performing arts), based in Brussels guided her work. They worked together (via email and skype) from May to December 2006. 

Participants were extremely enthusiastic and generously gave their time, energy, passion, intellect and experience: a meeting of foundations and the networks also took place, a declaration of cultural networks and a list of common values was agreed, an action plan of short, medium and longer term collaboration actions was produced, and several networks volunteered to take responsibility for moving this initiative forward. 

A Steering Group worked jointly on the final report of this 'International Meeting of Cultural Networks'.

Image in banner: © Adam Reeder