On 7 October 2021, the First SCO Museum Forum was held in Tula, Russia. It was organised by the Russian Ministry of Culture as part of the SCO Year of Culture.
The event was attended by Russian Deputy Minister of Culture Alla Manilova, Deputy Governor of Tula Region Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, General Director of the Moscow Kremlin State Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve Yelena Gagarina, General Director of the Hermitage State Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky and other representatives from famous museums in the SCO countries.
SCO Deputy Secretary General Muratbek Azymbakiev spoke via videoconference on behalf of the SCO Secretariat.
In the process of presenting his welcoming remarks he noted that the cooperation of museums does a great deal to conserve and popularise history and cultural heritage and cements ties between peoples and generations.
Muratbek Azymbakiev told the participants that the SCO permanently operates such a mechanism as a meeting of the ministers of culture of the SCO member states, where they discuss prospects of developing cooperation in their domain, including in the post-pandemic period.
Forum participants underscored the readiness to promote cultural ties, broaden interaction in museology, archive-keeping and librarianship expressed by heads of state of the SCO countries.
The meeting of the SCO Heads of State Council held in Dushanbe in September adopted such important document as an agreement between the governments of the SCO member states on cooperation in the protection of cultural heritage sites.
In the context of developing museology much attention was paid to China's proposal to set up an alliance of museums of the SCO member states as an open mechanism of international cooperation and a platform of communications between them, which is supposed to show the world the eventful history and close cultural ties that exist in the SCO space.