Cultural Rights for Cultural Institutions: Concepts and Case Studies.
Dr. Coeli Barry, Senior Advisor, Cultural Rights Forum, Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre (SAC) Title of the Forum “Cultural Rights for Cultural Institutions: Concepts and Case Studies”
Key objectives of the Forum
• the first objective is to introduce core concepts about cultural rights in a large canvas perspective, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which cultural rights can enrich the work of cultural institutions, such as the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre. To this end, we ask participants to read full-length academic articles (or synopses of these articles) which take up key debates among scholars and practitioners of cultural rights. Key points from the articles are highlighted when the assigned reading is distributed (for example, sections of the reading might be underlined), or we talk about these in the first section of the Forum.
• the second objective is to strengthen capacity of staff within the Centre: including research, project design and program development.
• the third objective is to explore the ways that cultural rights ideas can be integrated with existing programs at the Centre. This objective is related to the first and second ones. In addition to using core readings, we also develop activities within the Forum to allow participants to explore and reflect on cultural rights issues as they relate to existing projects at SAC.
Guided by these objectives, we hope the Cultural Rights Forum encourage SAC staff to think about how cultural rights might be used when thinking about the mandates and long-term goals of the Centre.
The Cultural Rights Forum topics are designed throughout the year to address a range of cases and themes to allow people from different divisions within SAC to see overlapping concerns across programs. These programs include multiculturalism, community-based anthropology, public archaeology, cultural knowledge, archiving & database development and management.
The Forum is geared not only towards the programs in SAC that focus on archiving and on digital heritage, but on the programs where we work directly with communities, as well as in research projects that build a knowledge base for strengthening diversity and making resources available to the wider public when possible.