Celebrating the launch of Dialogue Cafe on 27th May 2010...

Aleh Ferreira - Samba and Soul musician at the Dialogue Cafe launch from Dialogue Café on Vimeo.

We kicked off the inauguration of the Dialogue Cafes in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro with a short introduction of the team in Lisbon....

Dialogue Cafe team in Rio de Janeiro - from left, Sergio Pinto, Sara Piteira, Katia de Marco and J.D. Stanley.

The Dialogue Cafe team in Rio de Janeiro at UCAM, including from left, Simon Willis, Nuno Varandas, Prof. Candido Mendes, Sara Piteira, Luisa Sena, Jennifer, Diogo Vasconcelos, Rita Torre, J.D. Stanley, Neda Morrar, Sergio Pinto and in the top right hand corner, Julie Caulier-Grice and Katia de Marco.

 

For our first day, we invited students in Lisbon and Rio to take part in a discussion on sustainability. For about an hour, a group of 15 students in Rio and about 20 students in Lisbon talked about the main challenges posed by climate change - and some of the solutions. At the end, students swapped email addresses so that they could carry on the conversation online....

 
 

 

Jam sessiom transatlântica via Dialogue Café, com Aleh Ferreira (no Rio) e Carlos Martins (em Lisboa) from Diogo Vasconcelos on Vimeo.

Diogo Vasconcelos, President, Dialogue Cafe at the launch from Dialogue Café on Vimeo.

Sergio Pinto on setting up a Dialogue Cafe from Dialogue Café on Vimeo.

The press release announcing the launch of Dialogue Cafés in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro at 3rd Global Forum of UN Alliance of Civilizations is available to read here DC Press Release.pdf and available to read below

10 Dialogue Cafes to open on 5 continents by the end of 2011!

LONDON, UK - May 27, 2010 - The Dialogue Café Association is excited to announce the launch of its first two cafés, in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, to coincide with the 3rd Annual Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations on 27-29th May 2010.  Dialogue Café is a non-profit initiative, which uses state of the art video conferencing technology to enable face-to-face conversations between diverse groups of people from around the world so that they can share experiences, learn from each other and work together to make the world a better place. They will be linked by life-size, high-definition video and sound allowing people from different cities and cultures to talk and meet as if they were in the same room despite being located on different sides of the world.

Facts/Highlights:

With support from the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, Cisco, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Anna Lindh Foundation and others, the Dialogue Café Association is creating a global network of physical spaces - Dialogue Cafés - which will provide access to Cisco TelePresence technology to enable city-to-city and multi-city conversations and activities.  

These cafés will be connected through a global exchange that links cafés across the world to enable informal conversations as well as more structured multi-city activities such as workshops, seminars, conferences, concerts and lectures.

Dialogue Café results from the radical but simple idea that people have many things in common and given the opportunity, they will explore their common interests, sparking collaborations and stimulating ideas that address the major issues of today.  

Dialogue Café believes that these kinds of conversations and collaborations can lead to new ways of thinking and doing: they can empower individuals and communities, break down prejudice and misconceptions and promote greater understanding and co-operation across cultures.

The first two Dialogue Cafés will open on the 27th May in Rio de Janeiro at the Cândido Mendes University and in Lisbon at the Museum of Fashion and Design (MUDE).  Soon, Dialogue Cafés will be opened in London, Amsterdam, Florence, Toronto, Doha, Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Cairo, Istanbul, New York, San Francisco and Seoul.  

Each Dialogue Café will be managed by a local partner - in Lisbon by MUDE with the support of local partners including the Municipality of Lisbon and in Rio by Cândido Mendes University. These local partners will oversee the day to day management of the Dialogue Café.

Dialogue Café is created for individuals and organizations with a social, environmental, educational or cultural mission - such as foundations, civil society organizations, community groups, universities, schools, social enterprises, public sector bodies and agencies. 

Dialogue Cafés are spaces for innovation and creativity - with a particular focus on cross-cultural dialogue, social innovation, civic participation and arts, creativity and culture. The following examples illustrate the range and variety of activities that will be enabled by Dialogue Café as the network grows and develops around the world.

 

• Young people in Istanbul, London and Toronto sharing stories about their heritage.
• Women from Cairo, Doha and Amsterdam discussing the role of education and employment in empowering women. 
• Multi-city conferences and events on topics such as climate change, creativity and innovation, ageing and social exclusion connecting London, New York, Amsterdam, Florence, Doha and Ramallah. 
• Joint projects linking schools in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, and Seoul and San Francisco.
• Social entrepreneurs from Cairo, Tel Aviv and Toronto talking about potential commercial collaborations. 
• Simultaneous theatre workshops run in Rio de Janeiro, New York and San Francisco.
• Concerts from Rio de Janeiro live to London, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Florence and New York.
  

Supporting Quotes:

• Diogo Vasconcelos, chairman of Dialogue Café Association

"In a changing world globalization means collaboration - not standardization. Innovation can act as a bridge between countries and cultures. Dialogue Café is about "we" and "them" co-creating a better future together." 

• United Nations' High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, and Former President of Portugal Jorge Sampaio.

"Dialogue Cafés are perfect for celebrating and promoting diverCities."

• Professor Cândido Mendes, dean at University Cândido Mendes.

"Dialogue Café is at the nexus of the encounter of cultures in our times: relaxed conversation that leads to the discovery of the other."

 • National LambdaRail (NLR) President and CEO Glenn Ricart

"Dialogue Café very powerfully demonstrates the new opportunities for global collaboration enabled by advanced networks and network-based applications, as we see here today with Cisco TelePresence."

Supporting resources:

 

For more information on Dialogue Café visit www.dialoguecafe.org
• Cisco: http://www.cisco.com/
• United Nations' Alliance of Civilization: http://www.unaoc.org/
• Anna Lindh Foundation: www.euromedalex.org
• Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation: http://www.gulbenkian.org.uk/
• MUDE: http://www.mude.pt/
• UCAM: http://www.ucam.edu.br/
• National LambdaRail (NLR) :  www.nlr.net
• FCNN: www.fccn.pt
• RNP: www.rnp.br

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
Note: 
The NLR-operated Research and Education Cisco TelePresence Exchange provided the international connectivity enabling today's Dialogue Cafe sessions.

FCCN is a private not for profit foundation that runs the Portuguese research and education network. FCCN owns its own optical cable infrastructure providing 10Gbps connectivity to most Portuguese universities and has a 10Gbps connection to the pan-European GEANT network.

RNP - The National Education and Research Network (RNP) is a social organization funded by the Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia (Science and Technology Ministry), to maintain and develop advanced network infrastructure for educational and research collaboration and communication.

 

Katia De Marco, Candido Mendes University, Rio de Janeiro from Dialogue Café on Vimeo.

We are really excited to be able to share the programme with you for the launch of Dialogue Cafe this week in Rio, Lisbon and around the world!

The programme includes several activities representing all of Dialogue Cafe's objectives, including students and artists from the Rio and Lisbon using their local cafes to share their ideas, giving talks, and exchanging cultural experiences through music. Below is an outline of the days activities in more detail.

11.00 Brazil/15.00 Lisbon - Open
Presentation of Dialogue Cafe and discussion between Portuguese students living in Brazil and Brazilian students living in Portugal. Students will share their experiences of living in each other's culture.

11.30 Brazil/15.30 Lisbon - Climate and Environment change
In a world of constant transformations, the environment is a central preoccupation, sustainability projects proposes some different ways of living.  From Lisbon, Isabel Castro, and Orlando Franco, teacher for Professional Photography Classes at Escola Secundária Alves Redol, Vila Franca de Xira.  Students and teachers will join the discussion.

12.15 Brazil/16.15 Lisbon - e learning
Exploration of the contributions of new technologies on build bridges between nations and cultures throughout knowledge and shared experiences. From Lisbon, Laboratório de e.learning da Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

RECEPTION

14.30 Brazil/18.30 Lisbon - Official Launch
Speeches from the Mayor of Lisbon and the Chairman of Gulbenkian Foundation from Lisbon, and from Cadido Mendes and President Sampaio in Rio

15.30 Brazil/19.30 Lisbon - Cultural Moment (Lisbon)
 `Era un vocabulo redondo` - interpretation of the theme of Zeca Afonso by Maia Teixeira

15.45 Brazil/19.45 Lisbon- Theatre Moment (Rio)
Theatrical display with sketches of the play "A natureza do olhar" which traces a dialogue between two heteronyms of Fernando Pessoa

17.00 Brazil/21.00 Lisbon - Cultural moment (Rio and Lisbon)
Musical interaction between samba represented by Aleh Ferreira and jazz represented by Carlos Martins
 

Yesterday I went to the preview of Maslaha's excellent new exhibition about the life and travels of 17th century Ottoman, Evliya Celebi, a pious Muslim, musician, explorer and storyteller. Through his eyes, the exhibition explores the ways in which the Ottomans shaped and influenced London and the rest of Europe through music, medecine, art, architecture and coffee.

It's an eclectic collection, bringing together the Khalili art collection, music (that was especially composed for the exhibition) from the Royal Academy of Music, award winning film maker Suki Chan, Mercan Dede, an international Turkish Sufi popstar, as well as leading academics of Ottoman history. The exhibition will only be open until Saturday 15th May and then it's going to be turned into a virtual exhibition with additional podcasts, music and images and launched on 1st June.

Interestingly also, the exhibition is taking place in Bethnal Green Library, where Samuel Pepys, a contemporary of Evliya Celebi, kept safe his diaries during the Great Fire of London.

The exhibition is part of the British Council's Our Shared Europe Project which seeks to acknowledge the contribution of Islamic Communities and cultures - both in the past but also in the present - to the shaping of contemporary European civilisation and society, It was all organised by Maslaha and curated by Effusion.

To find out more about the exhibition visit: www.thebookoftravels.org


 

Later this month, on 27-29th May, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations will be holding its 3rd Global Forum in Rio de Janeiro on the theme of 'Bridging Cultures, Building Peace'. The Forum will bring together over 2,000 people, including political  and corporate leaders, civil society activitsts, youth groups, faith communities, research centers, foundations and journalists, to agree on joint actions to improve relations across cultures, combat prejudice and build lasting peace.

We're delighted to announce that we'll be launching our first two Dialogue Cafes - in Lisbon at MUDE and in Rio de Janeiro at UCAM - at the Forum. For more information on the Forum see here.

Join us on the 27th May at UCAM or MUDE for the launch of the first two cafes!