Culture 21 Plus (2025)

Culture 21 Plus. A new frame for Cultural Rights at the local level

Welcome to Culture 21 Plus, the document that updates our work on cultural rights in sustainable cities. It is structured on the three pillars that make up the UCLG Pact for the Future, namely: People, Planet and Government.

Culture 21 Plus is useful to (1) conduct self- assessment processes of the current state of local cultural policies, and (2) design local cultural strategies based on cultural rights and sustainability.

Culture 21 Plus will be implemented through a set of modules. Some modules are tailored to specific local contexts (metropolitan areas, intermediary cities, regions), while other modules address specific policy challenges (climate change, gender equality, or heritage). 

Have a look at the FRAME document, and let's talk about how Culture 21 Plus can be useful to you.

Culture 21 Plus. A new toolkit for Cultural Rights in Cities and Communities

UCLG has begun to draft a new toolkit to promote and implement Cultural Rights in Cities and Communities, to be adopted in 2025. It considers:

• The necessity of unfolding with care-based and rights-based concrete actions the UCLG Pact for the Future of Humanity: for the People, for the Planet, for the Government, adopted at the UCLG World Congress in Daejeon, in October 2022
• The Culture 21: Actions, adopted by UCLG in 2015
• The Rome Charter
• The concept of circular culture
   

The initial proposal of Culture 21 Plus outlines 6 blocks, with 30 key areas and 200 actions. It will be useful (1) to carry out a self-assessment of the state of play of the cultural policies of a territory; and (2) to design local cultural strategies based on cultural rights and sustainability.
 

We are in a “testing” phase! We already have an initial proposal, which is undergoing a process of experimentation, debate and shared cocreation with UCLG members, until its adoption in 2025.

If you stilll have questions on how can your city get involved, see the FAQs below. We are inviting cities and local or regional governments interested in “testing” Culture 21 Plus to write us at culture@uclg.org.

Three webinars have been organised in June 2024 in English, Spanish and French. We have already run tests in the following cities, and more tests are foreseen for 2024 and 2025: