2016 ENCATC Young Researcher's Forum

Nadia von Maltzahn is Research Associate at the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) in Lebanon. She is the author of The Syria-Iran Axis. Cultural Diplomacy and International Relations in the Middle East (I.B.Tauris, 2013, 2015), and holds a DPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. She co-edited Divercities: Competing Narratives and Urban Practices in Beirut, Cairo and Tehran (Orient-Institut Studies 3, 2015) and Inverted Worlds: Cultural Motion in the Arab Region (Orient-Institut Studies 2, 2013). Her current research project deals with cultural policies in Lebanon, looking in particular at cultural institutions and their role in the public sphere. Overview on the cultural policy context and the state of the arts Abstract Cultural policies are driven by a number of diverse institutions and actors. However, the situation in the Arab region where the state often played a principal role in cultural production and dissemination of culture led to the widespread perception that only a strong ministry of culture could create cultural policies. This is something being addressed by working groups on cultural policies in a number of Arab countries, seeking to advocate for inclusive cultural policies in which civil society plays a major role. In this lecture, I will provide an overview of the context in which cultural policies are formulated, focusing on the state of the arts and some of the main challenges. I will first give an insight into the state of cultural policy formulation and cultural policy research inside and outside of academia, before turning to the challenges that are being faced and how to move forward. I will distinguish between cultural policies in the Near East and North Africa on the one hand, and in the Gulf region on the other hand