The World Cultural Forum is an initiative which aim is to promote culture as a fundamental dimension of contemporary life, involving a stock of human abilities of diverse aspects - to be, feel, do, think, invent - focusing, especially, on the relation maintained with the development of societies.

Dislocating arts and culture from the suburbs to the centre of debates - thinking development as a cultural dimension, and culture as a factor for development - the Forum establishes a world platform aimed at strengthening the values of ethics, prosperity, sustainability, and global coexistence. It acknowledges the major role played by the production of knowledge, and the importance of stimulating innovation, arts, sciences, and technologies, involved in finding solutions for the needs of mankind.

The Forum stresses the fundamental role played by arts and cultural shows in the development of the economy, and the creation of new educational parameters; it also stresses how it is important to cultivate diversity - as sources of self-gratitude and self-esteem for the different communities, the ways of life, fundamental rights, systems of values, traditions, and beliefs. It also seeks to expand the role of culture in the policies of Brazil and those practised in the rest of the world, increase investments in the cultural sector by mobilizing the support for the development of cultural enterprises.

The World Cultural Forum is a global process, which is being built collectively by actors of various regions linked to one another through a network, and involving over 70 preliminary events on various continents. In Brazil, where it is already fully set up, the forum will include regional projects in various parts of the country, a Brazilian Forum in Rio de Janeiro; all this is to focus on one direction towards a referential landmark, that is, the major meeting which will take place in the city of São Paulo, during the period going from June 26, to July 04, 2004.