2016 'China-CEEC Arts Cooperation Forum' launches in Beijing

Vice-Mayor of Beijing Municipal People's Government Wang Ning gives a speech at the 2016 "China-CEEC Arts Cooperation Forum" in Beijing Garden Expo, May 9, 2016. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]

This forum could serve as a bridge for cultural, people-to-people and art exchanges and pragmatic cooperation between China and the 16 CEECs, and promote China-CEEC cross-cultural cooperation.

Themed on "cross-cultural cooperation", this forum is to build a sustainable platform for exchanges between mainstream artistic institutions, artist groups and individuals from China and CEECs to develop an exchange pattern featuring the government's leadership and co-participation of different types of artistic institutions and social resources, to tap into, integrate and capitalize on the superior resources of all countries, to maximize the sharing of achievements, and to contribute to market-oriented pragmatic cooperation.

Since the establishment of China-CEEC cooperation mechanism, rapid progresses have been made in cooperation in all fields and new achievements have been scored continuously. China and the 16 CEECs are all key nations along the Silk Road and links between Asia and Europe. As a significant cultural cooperation project under the "China-CEEC cooperation" mechanism, this forum will provide new power and opportunities for the cultural and people-to-people exchanges between China and CEECs, and thus exerted a far-reaching influence on advancing the mutual understanding between countries along the "Belt and Road".

Another focus at the forum is the China-CEEC Cultural Season to be staged in Beijing in 2017. The forum will incubate projects and ideas, and render talents, resources, channels, information and intellectual support for this event. During this forum, the representatives were grouped by five art categories: music, theatre, dance, fine art and performance for children. They exchanged information and views on topics such as education and training, collaboration and co-creation, academic study, arts management, marketing promotion, and 2017 "16+1 Cultural Season".

During the forum, guests had the opportunity to appreciate Chinese stage performing arts of diverse topics and styles presented by Chinese artists.

This event was co-sponsored by Ministry of Culture of China and Beijing Municipal People's Government and co-organized by the Bureau for External Cultural Relations of the Ministry of Culture, Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Fengtai District People’s Government of Beijing Municipality.

The 16 CEECs include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia.