Today in St. Petersburg, the VI International Cultural Forum, a unique cultural event of the world level, a discussion platform attracting several thousand experts in the field of culture from all over the world began: the stars of the drama theater, opera and ballet, outstanding directors and musicians, public figures, representatives of government and business, academic community.

The Forum’s main venue is the General Staff of the State Hermitage Museum, the Business Ground will be located in the Russian Ethnographic Museum. In addition, almost all cultural institutions of the city will be involved in activities: from state theaters to small art clusters and museums.

During the Forum the prizes will be awarded: “The Patron of the Year” for the most significant contribution to the support of cultural projects, the Anatoly Lunacharsky Prize is a unique award awarded to culture workers of non-creative specialties, as well as a prize for ballet pedagogues, teachers in the field of music and visual arts ” Times  connecting thread”.

The forum is developing in parallel in three directions. An extensive business program is of interest to specialists in various fields of culture. The festival program includes numerous cultural events for residents and guests of St. Petersburg. The business area creates conditions for the implementation of projects and the signing of agreements in the field of culture.

The business program of the Forum is represented by the work of 14 sections, whose leaders from year to year become outstanding domestic cultural figures, forming the agenda and directions for the sectional discussions. Among them – Mikhail Piotrovsky and Nikolai Tsiskaridze, Denis Matsuev and Vyacheslav Polunin, Lyudmila Verbitskaya, Fedor Bondarchuk and other representatives of the sphere of art. In addition, various intersectional events are held. According to preliminary data, 20,000 participants and 900 journalists from 34 countries will become forum delegates in 2017.

Among the participants of the Forum are the artistic director and director of the Mariinsky Theater Valery Gergiev, the writer, the Nobel laureate, Wang Meng, the film director Jos Stelling, the ex-director of the British Museum of Victoria and Albert Martin Roth, the director Emir Kusturica, the actor and director Ralph Fiennes, musician and composer Maxim Dunaevsky, head of the “Mosfilm” cinema concern Karen Shakhnazarov, ballet dancer Andris Liepa and many others.

The Republic of Tatarstan at the forum is represented by a large delegation headed by the Minister of Culture Airat Sibagatullin. The permanent representative of the Republic of Tatarstan in the city of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region Renat Valiullin will also take part in all the key events of the cultural forum.

As part of the cultural forum program, Culture Minister Airat Sibagatullin visited the office of the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Tatarstan, where an exhibition of paintings by artist Robert Myf was exhibited, who personally told about the creation of each work.

The work of the forum will last until November 18 inclusive.

RT Representation in St. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast