If you want to know how serious the Saudi Arabian minister of culture is about using art as a means of soft power, see his 2025 diary: chock-full with international meetings brokering deals and partnerships, ranging from Albania and India to Uzbekistan and South Africa and more. His department helped with the Saudi contribution to the Bukhara Biennial, which Badr was on hand in Uzbekistan to promote; steered the theme of this year’s Common Ground arts festival towards a collaboration with China; while financing a Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects at UNESCO’s MONDIACULT 2025 conference. At home, all part of Vision 2030, the bid to diversify the Kingdom’s economy beyond oil, Badr reckons his ministry has spent SR81 billion (£16bn) on cultural infrastructure since 2016, not least underwriting the newly launched 13-college Riyadh University of Art; the new Diriyah Art Futures (DAF), an arts centre dedicated to new media arts; the continued development of AlUla heritage site (location of the Desert X festivals) and the second edition of the increasingly noteworthy Islamic Arts Biennale, which opened in January.