Intercultural Dialogue in and through the Performing Arts in Southeast Europe

Milena Dragičević Šešić

Crossing briefly through the history of the collaborative projects and exchanges in the former Yugoslav cultural space, the paper focuses on the period from 1990 till today, a period when the dialogue has been challenged by wars, new frontiers, migrations of artists and intellectuals and the nationalisation of cultural policies. While only sporadic exchanges have taken place among public performing arts institutions in this period, it has been civil society that has created new spaces for collaborative projects in culture (supported by foreign donors). In three distinctive phases since the 1990s, civil society has used different strategies in the re-establishment of collaboration (exchange, networking, mobility, partnership).

Dr Milena Dragićević Šešić is the head of the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy & Management and the former president of the University of Arts Belgrade. She is a member of the board of the European Diploma in Cultural Project Management Brussels and the IUC Dubrovnik and a UNESCO and ECF expert for Cambodia, India and Arab countries. A guest lecturer at numerous universities, in 2002 she was named a Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques. Her research interests include: cultural policy & management; art activism, alternative art and public space; intercultural dialogue; culture of memory; media theory. She has published 15 books and more than 150 essays; her writings have been translated into 17 languages.