SESRIC participated in the OIC Cultural Festival: Baku Creative Week 2025 on 5-11 December 2025 at Heydar Aliyev Congress Centre in Baku. The Festival was organised by the General Secretariat of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in collaboration with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and the Ministry of Culture of Republic of Azerbaijan. The Festival brought together around 300 international participants from over 50 countries along with more than thousands of visitors, including high level officials from ministries of culture, trade, industry and tourism as well as actors of creative industry sector from both OIC and other countries.

During the Festival, SESRIC hosted an exhibition stand, showcasing its publications, capacity-building efforts, programme brochures with cultural elements, representing efforts of OIC countries on multi-sectoral socio-economic development, including through creative industry and cultural technology.

The Festival was inaugurated by H.E. Adil KARIMLI, Minister of Culture of Azerbaijan, and graced by the keynote speech of H.E. Hissein Brahim Taha, Secretary General of the OIC, delivered by H.E. Amb. Tarig Ali BAKHEET, Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian, Cultural and Social Affairs of the OIC. Other remarks in the Opening Session were made by Ministers of Culture of the OIC countries, namely H.E. Aurangzeb KHICHI of Pakistan, H.E. Ahmed HANNO of Egypt, H.E. Mabroukah OTHMAN of Libya and H.E. Imadeddin HAMDAN of Palestine. Additionally, H.E. Nadir ALPASLAN, Deputy Minister of Culture of Türkiye also addressed the participants at the Opening Ceremony as well.

SESRIC contributed to 2 panel sessions during the Festival. In the panel session titled “Technology Development in the Cultural Sector (CulTech) in Islamic Countries”, SESRIC highlighted the importance of developing strong CulTech skills among youth in OIC countries. It also emphasised the need to prioritise competencies that balance technological sophistication with cultural authenticity. SESRIC further outlined key competency areas of AI literacy, culturally rooted digital content production, cross-cultural design thinking and collaborative coding for cultural applications.

In the second panel titled “The Role of Creative Industries in Boosting Investment and Trade in OIC Member Countries,” in collaboration with ICDT, SESRIC presentation focused on “Capacity Building and Human Capital Development for Sustainable Creative Industries”. The presentation highlighted SESRIC’s efforts in strengthening human capacity development across OIC Member Countries. SESRIC outlined its work in statistics, research, and training and technical cooperation. The presentation emphasized how these pillars support evidence-based policymaking, skills development, and institutional strengthening to advance creative industries in the OIC region.

The Festival featured activities varying from panels, exhibitions to film screenings and other events across cinema, theatre, fashion, design, music, gaming technologies, digital creativity and start-ups.

The Festival served as a unified platform to bring out potentials of OIC Countries in creative industry, entrepreneurship, innovation, digital culture and technology sectors for the advancement of intra-OIC cooperation.

For more information, please visit: https://week.creative.az/

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