SATURDAY
Should one be surprised to hear the Ambassador of the United States telling an audience of students and influential Abu Dhabi elite that his country needed to raise its game and change their narrative in the region? I paraphrase, but he remarked that people in the Gulf thought of the USA in military terms. He would like to see a very different story emerging - one that focussed on the strength of US culture, of its diversity and its entrepreneurial spirit.
At a session on Cultural Diplomacy, I shared the panel with him and HE Lakhdar Brahimi (Member of the Elders and the ex-foreign minister of Algeria), who robustly told the same audience that the Arab world should get its act together and collaborate to ensure the rest of the world understood its rich and rewarding culture better.
It wasn't long before the emerging cliché of the arts as "soft power" was spoken. It's a phrase much loved by politicians and diplomats, but it troubles me in an artistic context. Surely the arts are neither soft, nor about power: they are about transforming lives, and, even at their most assertive, about creating benign and inspiring influence. The arts can influence many agendas: urban regeneration, social inclusion, youth engagement, the environment, and increasingly economic regeneration through skills, entrepreneurship and new media.
I was in Abu Dhabi as a guest of the pioneering arts festival, master-minded by the indomitable and charming Mrs Hoda Kanoo. She runs the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation and within a few years has built a remarkably diverse programme of high-level events (on the Thursday night I arrived it was the St Petersburg Philharmonic with Vengerov) as well as a ground-breaking programme of education and community work unique in the region. The festival spirit is certainly there and in a few years it could become a leader in its field and the region.
The Saturday concluded with a somewhat bizarre jazz world fusion band headed by Iraqi Oud player Naseer Shamma and his Global Music Ensemble. I'd describe it as "Arab lounge" with a dash of Pink Martini. Next up would be Sadler's Wells with Sutra, Gormley, Sidi Larbi and the Shaolin Monks, arguably a more convincing cultural fusion.
SUNDAY
A meeting with Mrs Kanoo to discuss a potential partnership with the Council to link new art creation to capacity and skills building in the UAE and broadly across the region. Then to Dubai once more for a late evening flight to Lahore.
MONDAY/TUESDAY
After breakfast and the local newspaper (complete with the startling tabloid headline -"EUNUCH FOUND STABBED"), we take a 45 minute drive with British Council colleagues to the private university Beaconhouse's visual arts campus. We have links with them, but all were keen to see more inspiring partnerships with the UK, including the revival of the much-missed scholarship scheme. We discussed reforming the best of the old agenda with some exciting new initiatives.
Negative perceptions of Pakistan and Lahore soon evaporate when you drive around the surprisingly free-flowing wide streets, passed the regiments of roadside bedding plants and the spacious gardens, not to mention the expansive colonial Mughal red brick buildings including the ornate Lahore Museum (finished in 1897) of which Kipling's father was the first director. Whatever the security issues, this is a functioning and vibrant city, with a growing reputation in fashion, design and contemporary visual art.
Evidence is in the pioneering work of Mrs Sehyr Saigol, the Founder (in 2006) and Chair of the Pakistan Fashion Design Council. At the venerable Lahore Museum, we see its Victorian rafters and Gandhara buddhas shaken to their roots by a funky Pakistani catwalk fashion show, complete with provocative designs. The show is linked to our own Reconstruction exhibit opening, championing the best of British Fashion to the Lahorean elite. This was a radical step for the museum and its dedicated staff. Returning the next day for a tour, I found the show packed with young people, students and school parties.
Aside from the museum and its desire to change and modernise, the vibrant but claustrophobic Lahore old city (including the famous Wazir Khan mosque) seems in urgent need of repairs. The Aga Khan Foundation is doing its best with dynamic skills and development schemes, its money coupled with great integrity. But the project risks being derailed by the vicissitudes of Pakistani politics. The Foundation's imminent withdrawal could condemn this historic, but living site to another century of decay and collapse.
More promising is the Urdu Taming of the Shrew by Theatre Wally that will come to Shakespeare's Globe in May (supported by the British Council and others) as part of the Cultural Olympiad. We saw it in an early rehearsal - energetic, physical and pacy, but currently without its leading lady. She, however, miraculously recovered in time for lunch, where she demonstrated she'd wipe the floor with Petrucchio. So much for Shakespeare's plot, so resonant in a society where so many women still struggle for so much.
A meeting with the world famous Rafi Peer Theatre and puppet workshop (also a surprising target for terrorist attacks) linked through Qawwali singing to London's Alchemy Festival, and a studio visit to Rashid Rana, international artist, completed a formidable day.
WEDNESDAY/THURSDAY
We had a delayed flight on PIA (their timetable is a renowned work of fiction), so I was late for my dinner engagement, hosted by our Country Director in India for Delhi's arts leaders. That was the prime purpose of my visit - to strengthen cultural ties, focus and grow our arts programme. Many guests were welcoming our resurgent programme and our new approach: now we just have to deliver!
More meetings of this nature with performing, visual arts, museum and literature contacts came over the two days, with welcome respite at the quaintly dilapidated Tolstoy Marg guest house, aptly booked for me by our Director of Arts in India - whose surname happens to be Pushkin.
Cordial encounters with our High Commissioner and the new Indian Secretary for Culture, as well as a productive meeting with the senior British Council India and South Asia regional team leave me much clearer as to our long term arts strategy for this critically important nation.
We did find time for a trip to Humayan's Tomb complex, one of India's archaeological wonders, now under sensitive restoration again under the auspices of the Aga Khan Foundation. Medvedev visited the site during the recent BRIC summit, according to the papers. But I bet none of the leaders ventured into the jostling crowds and claustrophobia of the neighbouring urban village of Nizamuddin. Tiny alleys crammed with shops lead you to the Nizamuddin Durgah, where at Thursday prayers, the multitudes of faithful were paying their respects, accompanied by the raucous sounds of increasingly frenzied Qawwali singing. My next trip will be to Caracas, where I very much doubt I could encounter such a spectacular display of devotion.