Consultation for a “Rainbow Paper” - deadline August 22nd, 2007

The Rainbow Paper will be a set of recommendations on intercultural dialogue based on the interests, knowledge and experience of the participants of the Civil Society Platform for Intercultural Dialogue.

The European Commission and the Council of Europe have both held their consultations on Intercultural Dialogue.  Both institutions have asked very broad and difficult questions about the challenges of cultural diversity, the concept of Intercultural Dialogue or the action needed at political and institutional level. The Rainbow Paper will complement these exercises by extracting recommendations from the manifold, concrete ideas of civil society actors about making Intercultural Dialogue happen on the ground.

The consultation asks questions on how to make intercultural dialogue happen more. It solicits answers from a broad range of civil society actors with experience of, or interest in intercultural dialogue. The collective result will be the basis for a dissemination campaign in the course of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008. Your contributions will be discussed, clustered, distilled, prioritised during a 3-day retreat with professional facilitation at Cittadellarte  in Biella (70 km from Turin, Italy), 6-9th September 2007. The overall aim is to identify the different sectors’ joint areas of engagement or their overlapping interest areas, in other words areas where art and non-art, education, social, human rights, anti-discrimination, minority, inter-religious (…) NGOs find cross-cutting issues on which they can collectively engage in the multi-layered process which Intercultural Dialogue is.

Around 30 invited people (expenses covered) will put their heads together and begin to translate your proposals into a set of recommendations. Depending on your contribution to this consultation, you could be one of the participants.

How to particiapte in the consultation: read more and find the application forms in the attached document.