Asialink: Australia's Arts Diplomacy Initiative to Asia

Bettina Rösler, a scholar at the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney, has published a new article on Australian cultural diplomacy. The piece, The Case of Asialink’s Arts Residency Program: Towards a Critical Cosmopolitan Approach to Cultural Diplomacy, appeared June 2015 in the International Journal of Cultural Policy. Working through the lens of the Asialink initiative, a professional development program for Australian and Asian artists and arts administrators, Rösler evaluates both the public diplomacy and personal benefits gained from this exchange. Outcomes of this initiative include network creation, intercultural dialogue, changing perspectives, enriched work practices, and accepting diversity. Yet while the author concludes that these artistic networks and "experiences are of particular value for the national interest," such experiences often fail to be "included in existing cultural diplomacy discourses" due to the government's "restrictive definition of networks."

The full article is available here.