Chair of the Board of the Prince Claus Fund 6 September 2011

Your Royal Highness, Excellencies, Distinguished guests,

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you all here at the launch of the pioneering handbook: Cultural Emergency in Conflict and Disaster.  This event also marks the start of the 15th Anniversary of the Prince Claus Fund.

Today we also commemorate the birthday of Prince Claus. This is not a coincidence:  the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development was presented to Prince Claus in 1996 by the Dutch Government as a ‘cultural’ birthday present. Many changes have occurred over the past 15 years but the core values remained the same: the primacy of equal rights, respect and belief that people develop themselves.

The first principal award in 1997 went to the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in Harare. They were praised for stimulating cultural exchange, drawing attention to local poets and philosophers and not only pushing back frontiers but also crossing them. Quoting from the laudatio: Literature is what stimulates people`s sense of self. Writing down one`s history, one`s imaginings, one`s ideas about the future has consequences for the development of society and individuals.

Almost 15 years later the recipients of the Prince Claus 2010 Principal Award,  Sofiane Hadjadj and Selma Hellal from Barzakh Editions in Algeria explained their motivation to publish independent publications by stating: ‘Literature paves the way to dreams , it opens the door to fantasy and imagination; by so doing, it is probably one of the most powerful tools of freedom’.  

Stimulating people's sense of self through culture has been core to the activities of the Fund. Throughout these 15 years the Fund has supported and honored people that play an important role in democratic change and the struggle for freedom in their countries.  Courageous people who take risks doing so. Who stretch the limits of freedom of expression and inspire others. People like Ali Ferzat, Prince Claus 2002 laureate, and one of Syria’s most important cultural activists, who was found severely wounded on the side of the road in Damascus last week. He made critical cartoons of Arab leaders and the political situation in Syria and had been very active in the last few weeks.

An Anniversary is a day for celebration and paying respect to all the people the fund works with, our network partners for their resilience in keeping culture alive under difficult circumstances, especially in zones of silence.

The Prince Claus Fund is grateful to the Dutch Government for continuing this cultural birthday present. We are also grateful to the Post Code Lottery for their generous support. We are grateful to all of you here, our cultural pioneers, who support us in promoting culture and development, in good times and bad times, overcoming conflict and disaster.