The basis for Mimetas efforts is the cultural rights and the right to freedom of expression. Strategically, we work with organizations that address these issues on behalf of their sectors. At the same time, we see, that changes cannot be achieved, unless this need for change is understood, embraced and advocated for by a community wider than the arts organizations and storytellers themselves, turning the stories into a widely adopted narrative for change. Storytelling is in this context also a tool for change. In this way, we work both for the universal rights that belong to the practitioners of storytelling, we see their free expressions as a prerequisite for making social changes.
The partners function within an incredibly difficult context in the MENA and East Africa. The last year has witnessed alarming increase in the closure of space for free expression across the two regions. Within the Arab region, even contexts that had previously provided a relatively more open space for free expression, like Lebanon and Tunisia, witnessed increased closure and censorship. These setbacks in the political environment were intensified by an unprecedented post revolutions and post pandemic economic crisis, crisis in governance, and in the case of Syria, an earthquake in February 2023 that added destruction to an already destroyed infrastructure. Here is how one of our partners in Lebanon summarized the implications of the current context on his generation:
“We were born during a civil war, we grew up in a country occupied by two foreign armies, we started contributing as adults to the rebirth of a country at a time where authority on the country has been given to our previous warlords. The occupation of Palestine, the horror of the genocide of its people, the mass murders happening in Syria are realities happening 50km away from us. The people’s uprising in Iran directly impacts Lebanon by the reinforcement of a radical propaganda among the Iran supporters political party and militia. The war in Ukraine surprised us as well, leading to flour and bread shortages but also to the sudden shift in the conversation with European partners who drop off the thread of development collaborations, pursuing another emergency happening elsewhere.”
In East Africa, in addition to similar trends of closure of space for free expression as in MENA, the pandemic and other continuous bottlenecks that hamper the progress of the arts and creative industries in this African region, there has been a growing trend towards artistic discrimination, injustice leading to several practitioners lose their careers and sometimes lives – hence creating unreplaceable voices for generations to come.
In the face of such a dim situation, our partners remain determined to achieve their vision for ensuring the right of artist to freely express themselves and for societies to have access to this expression, holding a mirror to themselves and their realities, and inspiring imagination for change. Here is how the same partner that was quoted above describe their response to the situation:
“Led by a humanistic vision, we kept believing in the necessity of arts and culture to access our full dignity, to allow to new generations to have the choice to think and express themselves the way they want. We engaged in ambitious projects, we gave all our soul and energy in creating them.”
For the preparation of the 2022 report, Mimeta did a survey Mimeta among partners. The aim was to establish more aggregated information about the total efforts from the group of partners. The survey was mostly focused on issues relating to the program objectives and the strategic goals. In the following we are sharing impressions from the survey, discussing them and elaborate on the findings based on the individual partners narrative reports. It is organized from the set of objectives and strategic goals defined in the agreement with Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The long-term impact coming from the program is to provide free artistic practice to individuals. To achieve this intended impact, the program focuses on outcomes that ensure protection for artists, storytellers, producers, and their works against abuse, censorship, legal or social persecution, and outcomes that increase accessibility for people to participate in artistic practice. These two outcomes constitute the universal artistic rights (ref. art 27).
Perspectives on outcomes that increase accessibility for people to participate in artistic practice.
Almost all the respondents have the clearest view on their own initiatives as attempts to develop people’s right to take part in the arts and media. There is a strong focus throughout the group on making better access for people to arts and media as well as bettering condition for professionals and the sector as such. The understanding is that an overwhelmingly part of the respondents is occupied in this work, and that they themselves have a direct impact on these matters within their projects.
Issues related to participation, sustainability of the sector and capacity building also has this very strong attachment. The partners aim to create a safe and inclusive environment for individuals to engage in artistic expressions within their spheres. The goal of the program is to provide free artistic practice to individuals, and we may perceive the answers from our partners that they themselves is providing these opportunities – and that they are very much supporting the outcome relating to increase in accessibility for people to participate in artistic practice. However, we may also assume that they are not working in policy dialogues, with advocacy and within culture planning processes to achieve political endorsement on the issues. Such processes are not possible within the political realities our partners are present.
Thus, the findings suggests that our partners have a strong focus towards the program objective of increased accessibility for people to participate in artistic practices, but with other means than implied in those of our program´s strategic goals that relates to public policies.
Summary on increased access to artistic practices:
From the general impressions of our survey and the individual partners reports we will state that the program objective on people’s free access to arts production is a main concern among our partners. On a strategic level it is more about making arts available within their own interventions than trough influencing public policies, which seems like an impossible path when consider the harsh political realities most of our partners works within. That is not to say that our partners are unpolitical. A question in the survey was about them agreeing in the following:
“My organization is concerned with artistic quality and have main focus on the arts rather than rights and policy”.
There were zero positive answers.
The focus on making arts available should be seen as the opposite of being unpolitical, as through involvement of citizens in the arts, impact-oriented outreach programming and cross-sectorial networking, partners are working to build stronger fabrics in civil society, new narratives and bring about social changes which in turn may influence the political reality.
Summary on ensuring protection for artists.
As the Mimeta survey notes, few or our partners are currently engaged in direct policy change. The current environment for civic engagement and freedom of expression in their regions does not allow for that, especially in contexts of dictatorship and conflicts. However, our partners continue to run programs that build the knowledge base and awareness needed when the moment for such policy intervention is rendered possible again.
This overview confirms the impression that partners are working with high awareness of the artistic rights and the freedom of expression, and that the right to participate in artistic work is their main concerns in terms of the two outcomes. As traditional policy processes to gain political endorsement are not possible within the present political realities, there are more attention to other methods of rights promotion. However, four of our partners have recently established programs designed for the protection of artists at risks. They are also involved in international dialogues on the topic, so there is valid development on the outcome: To ensure protection for artists, storytellers, producers, and their works against abuse, censorship, legal or social persecution, even in this harsher political environment.
Perspectives on the strategic goals of the program:
The program takes various actions to strengthen an organizational infrastructure that can safeguard the artistic rights and thus the objectives of the program. These actions are defined as the strategic goals of the program, and comprises the following efforts:
Support the development of infrastructure organizations (intermediary) in the sector
Support competence building, organizational development and relevant discourses in the sector
Support development of networks within the sector, national, regionally and internationally.
Support cultural planning processes and policy dialogues between the independent sector and authorities
Support awareness raising on the role of culture in social development, especially under socially demanding conditions.
By these actions, the program aims to create a safer and inclusive environment for individuals to engage in artistic expressions. Thus, the agreement covers these various organizational and sector development efforts, that in total should be seen as a strategy to safeguard the two program objectives.
Mimeta has in 2022 continued to support the development of infrastructural organisations. The intermediary organisations, that provide development and services to the sector they work on behalf of. We see that our funding is reaching activities in all the bulleted points above. An exception, as pointed out earlier in this report, would be activities concentrated on direct influence of public policy. We see that there is a shift among our partners in how to influence public policies. We see that they more or less have left the path of policy dialogues and replaced it with a focus on social impact. When assessing the strategic goals Mimeta also has registered some shifts in the networking efforts of our partners. In the following we concentrate our reporting on these two strategic dimensions.
