The British Council, Goethe Institut and the Alliance Francaise came together in Lagos on Thursday August 11 to form a cluster of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) in Nigeria.
There to sign the agreement on behalf of the three organisations were: Marc-Andre Schmachtel, David Higgs and Phillippe Lebreton - directors of the Goethe Institut, British Council and Alliance Francaise respectively, and members of the press.
EUNIC is the network of the international cultural relations institutes from member states of the European Union (EU).
According to Schmachtel who has been nominated as the cluster President for its first year, “EUNIC was formed in 2006 and has a reputation as Europe’s leading cultural relations practitioner to create lasting partnerships between professionals and to forge greater understanding and awareness of various European culture and to encourage language study.
“The EUNIC members come together to develop common projects and around the world; members come together in so-called clusters. That is what we are signing today; the Nigerian cluster. We have now over 70 clusters working around the world.” Schmachtel also indicated that the three cultural organisations decided to form the Nigerian cluster in order to strengthen cultural exchange as well as foster cultural and artistic collaboration between Europe and Nigeria.
“EUNIC will give us the opportunity to develop common activities within a European context and to strengthen by this the visibility of European presence in Nigeria,” he added.
Apart from a strong presence in other parts of the world, EUNIC clusters are already present in some African countries including Johannesburg, South Africa - where the clusters organise a major architectural festival every year. They also operate in Senegal, Mozambique and Ethiopia.
“Lagos (has been chosen as the location for the cluster) because this is where we are present. We have an associate member which is the Italian Consulate in Lagos. Normally the members are the cultural institutions of the member states but in case there is no cultural institution, it is possible to associate with embassies or consulates,” Schmachtel said. He affirmed that EUNIC is not an association but a network and that it would strive to undertake one big project per year as well as facilitating art and creative projects.
0 comments:
Post a Comment