A new impulse for a new year, and together with my colleagues from DW’s Global Media Forum we kicked off 2022 with some more sounding out of how culture and the arts can shape a better world. As societies around the globe are changing all the time due to disruptions in the digital space, “Arts Dialog” brought together creatives from Europe and the Global South to talk about how the role of artists is shifting, and how technologies can foster greater cultural exchange in turbulent times.

In conversation with Steven Walter and Yeni Anikulapo-Kuti

I was delighted to facilitate conversations between directors of two of the world’s most visionary music festivals: Steven Walter, the new artistic director of the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, and Yeni Anikulapo-Kuti, cultural director and founder of the Felabration Festival in Lagos, Nigeria, which is named after her father, the Afrobeat pioneer and human rights activist Fela Kuti. Their discussion of cultural icons and using music to speak truth to power was the opener for subsequent – equally enlightening – talks with German producer Sabine de Mardt and Nigerian film director Kenneth Gyang (on the streaming revolution), and South African writer and publisher Zukiswa Wanner with German publisher Helga Frese-Resch (on diversified access to literature).

Nigerian film director Kenneth Gyang and German producer Sabine de Mardt

Zukiswa Wanner and Helga Frese-Resch

Thanks to all for great discussions across the hemispheres, and you can read and see more here:

Photos: Screenshots / Global Media Forum 2022