Saudi Arabia puts culture on the G20 agenda: 'People relied on an industry that offered them an escape'

UAE Minister of Culture and Youth Noura Al Kaabi attends first meetings

Saudi Minister of Culture Prince Badr Abdullah bin Farhan addresses global cultural leaders at the Joint Meeting for the Ministers of Culture on the sidelines of the G20. Courtesy the Saudi Ministry oShow more

As Saudi Arabia hosts the G20 Summit for the first time, it has focused on culture as part of its official proceedings.

This week, Prince Badr Abdullah bin Farhan, Saudi Arabia's Culture Minister, convened officials from more than 20 nations and organisations in Riyadh and online, including the chair of Unesco, Audrey Azoulay, and the UAE's Minister of Culture and Youth, Noura Al Kaabi. The ministers discussed heritage conversation and preservation, environmental sustainability and culture's potential to contribute to the economy.

Figures provided by the Ministry of Culture show that the culture sector employs nearly 30 million people worldwide and Unesco puts its annual revenue at $2.25 trillion.

In an article published in The Art Newspaper, Prince Badr also underlined the outsize role that culture has played during the coronavirus pandemic and pointed to its potential as a means to lift the economy.

"With national lockdowns and restrictions on travel, the Covid-19 pandemic caused unprecedented changes in the lives of many people around the world as they endured school closures, remote work, disruptions to their health services and shuttered theme parks and movie theatres,” he wrote. “In response, people increasingly relied on an industry that offered them an escape from the daily curbs needed to stop the spread of the coronavirus and to help maintain a sense of normalcy in their lives. And that was the cultural economy.”

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Culture is investing in a number of major new projects as it develops its cultural scene, such as the Riyadh Biennial and the Black Gold Museum, about the history of oil, in Riyadh. The ministry used the occasion of the G20 meetings to announce a new addition to these plans: a centre for the protection of underwater cultural heritage in the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. The project builds on the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, adopted in 2001 by Unesco to safeguard archaeological sites such as shipwrecks, submerged landscapes, and sunken ruins.

By inaugurating the meetings, the Saudi leadership hope to establish culture as a priority for future G20 meetings. The next G20 summit will take place in Italy, and the Italian cultural ministry has pledged to follow this year’s lead and put the cultural economy on the discussion agenda.