Planning Civil Society: Putting Value on the Arts through Cultural Planning

Abstract

This paper analyzes one published community cultural plan (with contrasts to other plans) to illustrate the theoretical framework adopted for a larger study of community cultural plans from across the U.S. In particular, the case study illustrates how different planning initiators prefer specific planning styles, and how such styles shape the selection of planning partners, the collection and analysis of data and decision-making forums (public hearings, focus-group sessions, task-force meetings, etc.) and ultimately the specific planning goals and programs adopted for the arts and culture. In the specific case studied here, the driving force of civic foundations in initiating the plan led to a planning process that combined a communicative with a technocratic style of planning. This meant a broad inclusion of political and civic leaders combined with a heavy emphasis on professional research. The plan intermingled a language of expert-based professionalism with a language of civic individualism, and the planning process was marked by a focus on extensive community dialogue sessions in combination with hard research data to establish community needs. The combination of a communicative and technocratic planning style also led to planning goals that emphasized programs ddressing issues of citizen access, while disregarding alternative framings of arts policy, such as using the arts to build community identity or address social problems.