Mission
The Bureau of Public Information (BPI)
brings together essential public information and dissemination services
including relations with the press and audiovisual media, publications
for sale, video production and co-production, the editorial coordination
of UNESCO websites and the staging of public events.
UNESCO’s communication and public information strategy draws a
distinction between substantive information on the Organization’s
programmes and activities in the fields of education, science, culture
and communications and communication on institutional processes and
the messages, initiatives and public positions taken by the Director-General
in the face of unfolding events. While the former is the product of
permanent concertation between BPI and the programme sectors, the latter
is coordinated, within the Office of the Director-General, by his spokesperson,
drawing on BPI’s assistance as required.
Programme
BPI’s principal objective is to help establish UNESCO as an essential
point of reference in all public debates on areas under its mandate.
To achieve this goal, BPI relies more on establishing
and nurturing a sustained working relationship with the mass media all
over the world than on products of its own. A media action plan, developed
and constantly updated in cooperation with the programme sectors, guides
the day to day work of BPI. This action plan – a calendar of media-oriented
activities – reflects and seeks to give wide public exposure to
the organization’s strategic priorities.
To help UNESCO field offices and National Commissions
to develop the capacity to produce media-oriented material locally and
to disseminate it effectively, BPI, in cooperation with BFC and ERC,
conducts media training workshops at Headquarters and in the field.
Local and regional media action plans are developed in the course of
these workshops. As these plans are actually carried out, UNESCO’s
activities in the field will attract increased attention from national,
regional and local media.
To reach out to television audiences around the world,
co-production agreements with major television channels and producers
are negotiated and entered into by BPI. Resulting programmes –
such as the series of two-minute vignettes on the world’s disappearing
languages co-produced by UNESCO and the Discovery Channel, for example
– carry UNESCO’s messages to millions of viewers.
BPI is also responsible for the publication or co-publication
of printed works and audiovisual products offered on sale at market
prices. These include specialized books and CD-ROMs aimed at a scholarly
public – history series, scientific works – as well as books
and CD-ROMs targeting youth and the general public.
A flagship magazine, the new Courier, is produced and
distributed by BPI twice a year in the six languages of UNESCO’s
General Conference. Aimed at the Organization’s actors and partners
as well as to all those actively concerned with UNESCO’s work
and goals, the new Courier is distributed in bulk, free of charge, to
National Commissions, field offices, UNESCO clubs and others in a position
to redistribute it at national and local levels.
The UNESCO website will continue its deep renewal process.
Information resources now organized according to themes and no longer
to divisions or entities and are more accessible to the uninitiated.
Common ergonomic and design principles, adopted and adapted by the community
of “webworkers” at Headquarters and in field offices, are
progressively applied throughout the 100,000 online pages in order to
make them user-friendly. Translation mechanisms to publish more systematically
the information in the six official languages will be experimented.
Web-based facilities will be implemented to develop collaborative work,
communities and e-activities.
Detailed graphic design guidelines will provide a framework
for a better use of the UNESCO logo and the associate “delta”
lay-out introduced to create progressively a style that projects the
Organization as both coherent and diverse.
Through its Public Relations Unit, BPI organizes a number
of public and media-oriented events each year mainly, but not exclusively
at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. When financed through partnerships
with the private sector, these events and their follow-up may, in some
instances, generate extrabudgetary resources benefiting UNESCO programmes.
(source 32 C/5)
