Advocacy at Global Summits

ICR Research, the Global Health Academy at the University of Edinburgh, and M&C Saatchi World Services formed a partnership to conduct an innovative global review of creative and cultural advocacy at global summits. The review focused on the last ten years to explore how cultural and creative approaches can create change through engagement at major global summits.

The Wellcome Trust’s Cultural Partnerships team commissioned a review of how cultural and creative initiatives have been used to drive engagement and advocacy in diplomatic and policy spaces, specifically in the context of multilateral summits, regional organisations, city networks and major global events.

To the best of our knowledge, this review was unique. The summits we researched included:

• Conference of the Parties (COP)
• G7 and G20 summits
• UN General Assembly (UNGA)
• World Economic Forum (WEF)
• World Health Assembly (WHA)
• World Health Summit (WHS)

We found that long-term, sustainable, partnerships, characteristic of cultural relations, were needed to tackle deep-rooted issues and create real change. While information was not scarce at summits, attention was, and cultural and creative approaches could engage emotionally and cognitively. Emotions were drivers of decision making. Also, culture’s immediate impact and complexity could drive and support long-term engagement, especially when used as a platform and enabler of exchange and cooperation for the common good. There were opportunities for cultural and creative advocacy to add value at all of the global summits studied in this report, but these varied depending on the specific format of each summit.