The arts, culture, music and design are at a societal crossroads. Often, if not too often, the arts and artists are at the margin of societal discourse and decision-making. Living in the pandemic age coinciding with the anti-racism movement has highlighted the critical and constructive role culture at large and the arts can play in an entirely unprecedented situation. We need a new mechanism, if not a vehicle to bring to bear the creativity, imagination, compassion, experience and impact of the cultural sector to the burning issues of our time.
Through the collaboration between the Melody for Dialogue among Civilizations Association (Melody) and Boston’s Northeastern University (NE), we seek to integrate artists and the arts, music and design, including architecture, systematically in societal debates aimed at a better and more sustainable world and more sustainable and creative cities.
At the threshold of the 21st century, we are challenged to define and encourage a new beginning: the emergence of a new avantgarde towards a better and more just world devoid of poverty, less polarized and divided than today. Culture is a matrix of infinite possibilities and choices