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Boosting Women’s Leadership in Arts and Through Arts Discussion

Posted in WIL event reports
31 January 2012 - Brussels

On 31st of January 2012, WIL members gathered together for a discussion on the topic of “Boosting Women’s Leadership in Arts and Through Arts”.

Mr John Vassalo, Vice President EU Affairs, Microsoft, welcomed the guests at Microsoft’s premises in Brussels and spoke about the company’s initiatives supporting women and art. He also noted that in the future, increasing importance of technology and its applications in everyday life, we are going to need more technicians and stressed, that technical knowledge is going to become increasingly important also for artists.

Pinuccia Contino, Head of Unit Multilingualism and Translation Studies, DG Translations, European Commission, roundtable moderator, opened the discussion by quoting Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, who stated, that: “Arts and culture are a public good which should be available to everyone”. According to Ms Contino, we can talk about art and culture from different points of view, including: subjective, social and economic. When addressing the question of what art really is, some of the issues that need to be considered, are: the relationship between art and society, the relationship between art and culture and finally the relationship between art, culture and economy. Referring to Commissioner Vassiliou’s viewpoint, Ms Contino also asked the question of how to ensure the dissemination of culture, while at the same time ensuring the survival of the artists.

Sophie Shoukens spoke about the way she sees art. She noted that we are all the time chasing our shadows, and we, women know it even better if we have children, families, careers, businesses... The world we live in is gradually becoming more and more formatted and formalized. Art is there to break the patterns. It allows us to freeze our minds for a second. It brings hope…

Going into discussing more practical aspects of art and culture, Ms Shoukens also spoke about her career path. She shared her experience of: working as producer and supporting the artists in front of their publishers, who often base their decisions on whether or not to publish a particular piece on Marketing studies; working in the European Commission, as Head of Cultural Developments, and finally, her journey as a film director. In her films, “Alice or Life in Black and White” and “Marieke, Marieke”, she presents the way cultural paradigms influence women’s choices and is often touching on the meaning of femininity in different contexts.

Laure Kaltenbach, Director General Forum d’Avignon - introduced by Ms Contino as a woman who ties together culture, art, economy and society - spoke about culture from two different points or view: anthropologic and economic. Ms Kaltenbach stressed the significance of the cultural industry, which, while having worldwide revenues of over 1,3 billion dollars is often underestimated.

Drawing on the example of the Guggenheim museum, the opening of which completely transformed the Spanish city of Bilbao, leading to a drastic drop in unemployment (from 21 to 4 per cent), she discussed the economic importance of a strategy on culture for each community. . In her view, when talking about the links between culture and economy, there is a need to touch on the issue of social equasion; Ms Kaltenbach stressed, that by enabling social cohesion, culture pushes people to engage in joint projects, thus contributing to the economy.

Elena Bonfiglioli, Senior Health Director EMEA, Microsoft, used the opportunity of WIL meeting to raise awareness of its Women Talent Pool programme and provided the gathered guests with its description, as well as encouraged all the WIL members, who share the network’s vision of nurturing talent, to engage high potential women from their circles in WIL’s activities and provide them with the opportunity to become WIL members. She also announced the official launch of the Women Talent Pool Programme, which will take during WIL’s 4th anniversary event, on 6th of March.

In conclusion, WIL’s first event on the topic of art and culture turned out to be a success and led to the conclusion, that the cultural industry has a lot of potential to help revive the European economy.

WIL’s Women Talent Pool pre-launch gathering

During the day, WIL also had the pleasure to welcome for the first time at its event some of the young talents (Emerging Leaders) participating in WIL’s Women Talent Pool Programme, an initiative built to support high potential women in mid-management positions by offering them mentoring, training and networking opportunities.

A report on the Women Talent Pool pre-launch gathering is available here.

Tags: Elena Bonfiglioli, Women in Culture, Pinuccia Contino, Women Talent Pool

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