Artistic and cultural mobility is the transnational temporary travel of artists and cultural professionals. It is part of their regular working life and contributes to widening their circle of partners in home and resident countries. It is considered as a chain of individual and collective benefits in a context of increasing exchange in a globalised world. Nevertheless, there is a growing concern about the lack of artistic and cultural mobility as border controls tighten in many regions around the globe, cultural business exchanges are not fair, cultural diversity is not yet fully respected, visas are difficult to obtain, funding is difficult to find, accurate information on legislation is lacking: these kinds of problems are highly relevant in the Arab world and the Balkans.
It is time to address this issue that saps the creative potential of individual artists, cultural actors as well as social entrepreneurs and activists and is detrimental to international arts productions, diversified art works, and generally to cultural enrichment and innovation worldwide. This growing concern is at the foundation of the Istikshaf Coalition, a platform launched in 2012 with the aim to foster synergies, joint projects and cooperation between mobility operators in the Euro-Arab region.
The Arab Education Forum (Jordan),
the Roberto Cimetta Fund (France) and 
the International Association for Creation and Training (Egypt) main partners within the coalition, are independent and not-for-profit organizations active in the Euro-Arab region, supporting cultural and artistic mobility. Fully aware of the urgent need to address the current challenges to artistic exchange, we drafted a “Regional Mobility and Freedom of Movement Policy Agenda (2012-2015)”. Hence, we commit to ensure the participation of all stakeholders, to involve government and relevant decision makers, to call upon a serious commitment by the public at large to understand the importance of mobility, to use the best practice in policy development process, to gather information, to challenge the current policies issues and to present concrete solutions.
The Istikshaf Coalition, in collaboration with 36 social and cultural organisations so far, identified 4 policy areas that included 16 policy positions and recommendations and 21 advocacy actions that should be implemented on a regional level.
Policy Issue 1: Mobility on the national agenda
We aim to ensure that decision makers adopt the concept of mobility in the national agendas in the region, influencing the cities’ agendas and private sector strategies to acknowledge that mobility is a public concern.
Policy Issue 2: Financing mobility
We aim to agree with public and private sector institutions and the donor community in the region on transparent mechanisms for allocating budgets and distributing funds to support mobility initiatives without restrictions.
Policy Issue 3: Crossing Borders
We aspire to the free movement of people and ideas across the Arab Countries and their external exchanges. We aspire to the free movement of people and ideas across the Arab countries and their external exchanges.
Policy Issue 4: Mobilizing communities
We aim to encourage the engagement of people to be supportive of art, culture andmobility and reduce the fear factors that limit the participation of men, women and youth from different backgrounds in being active citizens.
The full text of the Istikshaf policy agenda is available here.
If you share our values and commitments towards the improvement of artistic and cultural mobility in the Euro-Arab region and worldwide, we strongly suggest that you sign this petition and adopt the Istikshaf mobility agenda.
PLEASE FILL IN THE FORM ON YOUR RIGHT AND SIGN NOW!
