A Cultural Dialogue with VALID in Novo Mesto

Over the course of the 15^th and the 16^th of June of 2021, the VALID project organized their second intercultural event: the Intercultural City Exchange, hosted in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, though held online over zoom. The focus is on a local level, specifically with the purpose of finding connections between groups and creating an exchange of culture, such as through cities, cultural ideas, etc.

As well as this, ideas were shared around during the runtime of the conference and suggestions were given in terms of what can be done for cultural minorities, migrants, etc. to promote inclusiveness, cultural dialogue, and building a network of towns. The zoom meeting was also divided into breakout sessions that discussed local ways of participating and suggestions, and polls were done in order to gauge the opinions and knowledge of participants.

The event in Novo Mesto was productive and helped to share interesting ideas for cultural promotion

Possible expectations and suggestions given further increase participation, inclusion, motivation, etc. for recipients and prove to be beneficial. General things encouraged include creating things such as NGOs and consultative bodies for cultural minorities/migrants, encourage those who have the right to vote, promoting art and creativity, flexibility, approaches such as personal and “here and now” approaches, among other things.

Among the discussion topics covered was also things that are already done for promotion of inclusion, such as daily centers (mostly for children,) activities and classes for kids and adults (such as language, IT, work help, etc.), workshops, year-wide cultural events, and more. It was also made clear that there will be future international events held across other countries.

Overall, it can be said that this event was productive and helped to share interesting ideas for cultural promotion. Of course, more events like this will be held.

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The VALID project is a bottom-up approach for promoting inclusion and cultural dialogue among people, and the purpose of this meeting was to facilitate that, with several speakers giving presentations with examples of local development, including people from various cultural projects, NGOs and other associations.