News

EFA at the EFAH General Assembly 2004

3 November 2004

The European Forum for the Arts and Heritage held its 12th General Assembly in Lille, France On the 28th, the 29th, the 30th and the 31st of October, the 12th annual General Assembly of the ‘European Forum for the Arts and Heritage’ (EFAH) took place in Lille (France). EFA is a member of this important organisation and as the secretary general of EFA, I was present at this annual conference. Once again: it was a very interesting and fruitful EFAH conference. It was held at the same time (and in the same building called ‘le nouveau siecle’) with a conference organized by ‘Les Rencontres’. Therefore, some of the activities were organized in collaboration. So was ‘the opening session’. During this opening session, a ‘public signing’ on cultural cooperation between regions was organized. The region of Nord Pas de Calais signed a cooperation agreement with the Flemish Community of Belgium, Voïvodie de Silésie (Poland), the regional council of Rogaland in Norway and the French speaking community of Belgium. High representatives of all these regions were present at this occasion. On Friday and Saturday, different key note speakers were invited and a high number of interesting workshops was organized. Among others, the themes included ‘What is a Europe of the regions?’, ‘Current approaches to regional cultural policy’, ‘EU support for regional cultural co-operation’, ‘Europe and the wider region’. On Friday, there was also an interesting presentation about ‘Turkey, the challenge for the artists’ with the participation of artists and cultural workers from Turkey. The closing session on Saturday, ‘Regions, culture and the New Europe’, was chaired by Dragan Klaic, president of the EFAH, with a commentary by Dieter Lesage, Ph. D. in Philosophy. Thanks to the fact that this meeting was organized in the frame of Lille – European Capital of Culture 2004, an interesting cultural programme could be offered to the participants including a guided tour of the Picasso exhibition at ‘La piscine’ in Roubaix. EFAH is a very important network in Europe. As already stated before, EFA will collaborate as much as possible with EFAH. I invite you to look at EFAH’s website: www.efah.org. Hugo De Greef Secretary General