The conference was opened by Culture Minister Bozo Biskupic, who said that the three-day event, pooling more than 200 participants from leading world universities and cultural institutions, would give a great contribution to the analysis of changes in cultural policy.
Culturelink was established by UNESCO and the Council of Europe in 1989 in Paris, during an international symposium on cultural development and cooperation networks. The network is based
at Zagreb's Institute for International Relations.
As the seat of Culturelink, Zagreb has become an important place on the European and world "culture map", a city linked with the term Zagreb school of cultural policy, Biskupic said.
The minister said the Institute for International Relations and Culturelink members had been of great help to Croatia in responding to the challenges of two major processes - democratisation and globalisation.
The first Culturelink conference was held in Zagreb ten years ago.
The conference was organised with the support of UNESCO, the Council of Europe, the Croatian ministries of culture, foreign affairs and European integration, and science, education and sports, the Zagreb city authorities, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the HIVOS foundation.