Dear participants and dear resource persons,

ASEF is delighted to announce the launch of the blog of the “Creative Economies” Asia-Europe Emerging Photographers’ Forum 2009. We invite all of you to share your ideas and images through this blog and enrich the Asia-Europe dialogue on “Creative Economies”.  One of the key aims of the blog is to engage the participants of the Photographers’ Forum 2009 on the theme of this year’s meeting, namely “Creative Economies”.

We have already heard from each of you – in your applications – on the motivations that inspired you to explore this theme. We would now like to use the medium of the blog to enable all of you to learn about each other’s motivation and thoughts on the theme. We would like to begin our conversations on the blog by sharing our perspectives on the following questions on the theme:

How does the idea of “Creative Economies” resonate for you? What does it mean to you and why?

What inspired you to explore this theme through photography?

We request each of you to respond to the above-mentioned questions with brief comments (between 1 and 3 short paragraphs) on our discussion page. You are welcome to respond to each other’s post and begin creative dialogues on the theme and its meaning for each of us, individually and for all of us, collectively in a time of increasing financial uncertainties in our own local communities and across the world.

We would also like each of you to capture your thoughts and ideas on “Creative Economies” through your cameras. Each of you is invited to create a photography portfolio on this theme and to share them on this blog.  This, we believe, will enable our conversations to emerge and strengthen till we meet in Malaysia in a few weeks time.

The “Creative Economies” Asia-Europe Emerging Photographers’ Forum 2009 will conclude with an exhibition of all your works. This blog will enable all  photographers to share and exchange your works in preparation for this public exhibition. During the Forum, you will all be invited to select specific photographs for display at the exhibition.

In the coming days, our facilitators will be sending you more details on the technical information you might need in this regard. We will constantly update information about the Forum on the blog, including the programme. We believe and hope that this online sharing of ideas, experiences and photographic work among the participants will challenge and inspire us to create an enriching Asia-Europe Emerging Photographers’ Forum 2009.

We look forward to a successful collaboration ahead!

Jerneja Rebernak

Asia-Europe Foundation