Culture minister attending first top-level conference on spatial planning
Minister of Culture Indrek Saar (SDE) is participating in a conference in Switzerland this weekend that for the first time discusses issues of spatial planning and its effect of the quality of life at the highest political level. The conference is taking place on the side of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The conference brings together the signatory states of the European Cultural Convention as well as the observer states on the Council of Europe and opens the 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage.
One of the issues on the agenda is the need to highlight the importance of Baukultur and spatial planning for European society in general, and its influence as an essential determining factor in the quality of life.
"We see cultural heritage as an important component of our identity. Alongside preserving existing heritage, we should increasingly attach value to the spatial environment created today as something that will become a mainstay of our cultural consciousness in the future," Saar said. "It is very important to agree how to build it in such a fashion that the result is new value that advances culture and the society as a whole," Saar said in a Saturday press release.
The conference will look at construction as an eminently cultural act, and discuss the quality of the built environment's direct influence on identity and cultural diversity on one hand, and social cohesion and security on the other, the organizers of the conference stated.
The results of the conference will be consolidated by publishing a declaration on built culture. The last conference of the European ministers of culture took place in Namur, Belgium, in 2015.
The 2018 WEF will start tomorrow Monday. Saar will spend altogether four days in Switzerland. After the conference, he will follow presentations and panels at the 2018 WEF in Davos until Prime Minister Jüri Ratas (Center) will take over as the representative of the Estonian government on Wednesday.
On Saturday evening Saar also delivered the opening remarks at a concert in Zurich's Tonhalle of the Estonian Festival Orchestra, conducted by Paavo Järvi. The orchestra performed composer Erkki-Sven Tüür's ninth symphony, called "Mythos". The convert is part of the orchestra and Järvi's tour on the occasion of the Estonian centennial.
Editor: Dario Cavegn
Source: BNS, ERR