ICAI

In September 1989, ICA staff met in Brussels to create the Institute of Cultural Affairs International (ICAI) to serve a symbolic role in unifying the Institutes globally. Models of successful programs in the Institute’s past, including Fifth City, were systematized as the “Technology of Participation,” to be used in ICAI leadership training as an example. The ICAI decided upon its four primary objectives at the 1992 global conference in Prague that remain definitive of the work of the ICA into the present:

• • sustainable development,
  • organizational transformation,
  • pedagogy, and
  • international dialogue.

In 2000, the ICAI added objectives such as Community Youth Development and Sustainable Community Development. 

At present, the ICAI has embraced a “peer to peer” approach as a global organization, in that it utilizes a regionalized perspective to allow national ICAs to take on priority functions and to be the primary modes of activity and decision-making.