Reframing Access: The Turn Toward Participation and Art-Mediation

Against the backdrop of the Lisbon targets of ‘economic growth and cohesion’, cultural industries are high on the European Union's (EU) policy agenda. To unleash the ‘Lisbon potential’ of the cultural industries, the establishment of a customized European cultural industries policy is required. It will be difficult to develop such an overarching policy, which must accommodate both profit and non-profit organizations in different cultural sectors that were until recently covered by the member states’ cultural policies or that had evolved in the context of the common market. The cultural industries’ intertwined cultural and economic interests, absence of an accepted common description and the many general and sectoral EU rules that are applicable result in conflicting viewpoints that set the different EU institutions and their departments at odds with one another. Through in-depth policy analysis, this article provides a framework from which to initiate debate on the creation of a European cultural industries policy. It contains an overview of the status quo on the cultural industries (the debate, the definition and the regulations applicable) and an assessment of the situation (the contradictions). Forecasts are then drawn for possible future tendencies of an EU policy for cultural industries. Finally, it will be argued that the scope and hierarchy of the rules and agreements in force will be decisive for the EU's approach towards the cultural industries. The article concludes by arguing that despite the EU's rhetoric about ‘cultural diversity’, in the light of negotations within the World Trade Organization (WTO), a European cultural industries policy will be predominantly an employment policy instead of a cultural policy. It is primarily driven by economic growth and cohesion, making national cultural policy considerations subordinate to common-market objectives.

Purpose This paper asks the following research question: What are the policy dynamics of copyright regulation for digital audiovisual (AV) archives in Europe and what is their potential impact? The paper aims to discuss the social relevance of archives, European cultural policies targeting operationalisation of these archives and underpinnings and sought implementation of copyright policies. Design/methodology/approach Drawing upon three European cultural policy approaches, namely, democratisation of culture, cultural democracy and governmentalisation of culture, the discussion aims to situate current legislative attempts within digital content governance and examine policy as to its proclaimed aims of broadening access. The authors deployed macro-level legal analyses of key legislative acts of the European Union (EU) with direct relevance to the availability of and accessibility to digital historical content by European citizens. The authors juxtapose relevant cultural policy interventions with the corresponding legal rules and norms in copyright legislation. The authors evaluate the ways in which normative arguments are reflected in these acts and propose reflections on documented and possible impact. Findings The authors argue that the EU’s legal direction is characterised by uncertainty of conviction and internal tensions regarding the place of common cultural heritage in EU policy, and they present a restrictive acknowledgement of what culture and heritage policy entail and, by extension, how cultural matters should be governed. Cultural heritage AV archives are examples of digital content whose governance was almost “automatically” linked to copyright. Originality/value The paper links copyright and cultural policy and demonstrates that although the EU cultural policy is based on access, availability and usability, copyright is unnecessarily restraining them with the improper design and implementation of exceptions and limitations. This reflects EU’s focus on the single market, which, in this case, is pursued at the expense of building of a European identity with shared memories.

The aim of this article is to analyze the impact of EU cultural policies on a EUropean (capitalized "EU" meaning only EU member states) cultural identity. Although EUropean integration began as an economic project, the EU has developed more and more statelike features over time and has brought the question of democratization to the fore. Such questions, in turn, led to questions of what constitutes the EUropean demos and how to conceive of its collective identity. The EUropean identity has developed in addition and as a complement to the national identities of the member states. The article argues for EU cultural policies that foster plural, multiple, and dynamic identities instead of a unified EUropean identity. The EUropean cultural policies should not be based on assumed common roots expressed in the cultural heritage of Europe, but rather should focus on contemporary and critical cultural and artistic expressions.

This study attempts to examine why European Union cultural policy does not address the issue of migration of people from non-European countries to Europe with sufficient recognition of the major impact it has on European cultural identity, and what are some of the advantages of doing so. It is important to note that a strong cultural policy common to all members of the European Union does not exist and may be said not to be in the interest of European nation states. Nevertheless, the impact of European Union cultural policy on various aspects of cultural and social life in Europe is growing and is therefore assessed both in terms of its official description as stated by Article 151 of the Treaty of European Union and with regard to the variety of programmes it establishes. The remit and implementation of cultural policy are found to be constricted by various supranational and national issues, and their relation to the impact of migration, while in existence, is limited. Cultural initiatives already being run within the framework of European Union cultural policy and which address issues related to migrant cultures and European citizenry are assessed. This analysis leads to suggestions and recommendations, the aim of which is to foster a greater recognition of the importance of the value of cultural difference due to the influence of migration on European social settings, and to encourage the formulation of European cultural policies that aim at more reciprocity and mutuality. This paper joins a growing number of calls for a change in the perspective of policy-making to reflect the transnational reality of migration and its impact on and contribution to culture in Europe. It does this while at the same time acknowledging the fact that nation states play a largely determining role in the ideation and implementation of European Union cultural policy. This research is based on a theoretical framework that provides the discussion with a foundation from which to assess contemporary models of multiculturalism and integration as well as grapple with the implications of cultural policy on European self-identification and representation. This analysis roots its critical perspective in a close reading of Ziauddin Sardar’s propositions of “mutually assured diversity” and “transmodernism” which are applied to the context of cultural policy. This paper is based on research carried out through the collection of secondary data, with resources that provide information which is recent and relevant to current issues of migration, social integration and European culture and identity.

This paper aims to analyse the conditions that enable a double political-economic instrumentation of culture through European Union programmes, and their consequences for the cultural sector. The first European programmes focused on the symbolic value of culture which was perceived as an essential element for strengthening the European identity, and thus as a crucial tool in the project of building the European identity, which is part of a political integration programme. In the context of the development of the creative economy, which overlapped the 2008 economic crisis and a growing influence of the market ideology, a few years later, the European Union launched the Creative Europe programme, thus setting up a new development framework for the cultural sector. For culture, the economic and political arguments in the Creative Europe programme outline a future inherently connected to its contribution to these fields, leaving behind the symbolic and social value of culture characterised by non-lucrative purposes. The programme lays out a direction in which culture is monetized as competitive advantage and bets on the contribution of the cultural and creative industries to become a competitor on the global creative economy. The new framework offered by Creative Europe transforms the approach to culture, placing it in a landscape of global competition, in the company of creative industries, favouring the integration of culture by the latter, not the other way around, thus entailing structural changes in the cultural sector.

The European Union secured limited legal ‘competence’ to act in culture in 1992. This article examines the operational context and its complicated and countervailing tensions that make European cultural policy formulation and implementation difficult. Underlying problems originate in the failure properly to define what is meant by ‘culture’ in different contexts or to identify clear and pragmatic policy objectives, although legitimate ‘instrumental’ use of culture is common. The EU’s institutional structures (Council, Commission and Parliament) are often at cross‐purposes, while the national interests of member states can have a negative effect. The structure and internal politics of the Commission ensure that the Directorate responsible for ‘culture’ remains marginal, despite its growing ambition. An attempt to institute an ‘Agenda for Culture’ in 2007 has had some initial success, but given the definitional, legal, political and administrative problems, claims being made for significant progress seem somewhat premature.

Joost Smiers is professor emeritus of Political Science of the Arts, research fellow in the Research Group Arts and Economics at the Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands. He works on decision‐making in cultural matters worldwide, on new visions on copyright and the public domain, on freedom of expression versus responsibility, on cultural competition policy, on the income of artists and their entrepreneurs, on European cultural policy, on UNESCO’s Convention on Cultural Diversity, and on cultural identities.

The debate concerning European cultural policy – or what we prefer to call cultural policy in a changing Europe – came very much on to the agenda in the 1990s, in the context of what we may regard as a significant cultural turn in EU discourses. There was the sense at that time that the project of European unification could only move forward on the basis of a new kind of European cultural imagination. There were two directions in which the debate was to move. The first was in terms of the construction of a pan-European cultural space, and the possibility of creating a common European culture and identity. This integrationist agenda was associated with the enlargement of European cultural markets and spaces, as, for example, in the media policy for ‘television without frontiers’. The other direction in which thinking moved was towards a new regionalist agenda, with the slogan of a ‘Europe of the regions’, with the emphasis being put on the idea of Europe as a rich cultural mosaic, and on the idea of ‘unity in diversity’. At the heart of the unfolding debates, along both of these lines of thinking, was the issue of national cultures, which have, of course, been the primary frame of reference in which cultural policy agendas have been elaborated in modern Europe. How, it was being asked, might cultural policy now be re-framed in a context in which national objectives were no longer self-evidently the ‘natural’ priority?KeywordsCultural DiversityInternational MigrationEuropean CityShadow EconomyCultural ExpressionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Exploring implicit and explicit cultural policy dimensions through major-event and neoliberal rhetoric

An analysis of European cultural policy supports the argument that the European Union (EU) is first and foremost an economic union. This paper traces two policy styles in European cultural policy: one oriented to deregulation and privatisation; the other concentrating on social development. It argues that the creation of de facto cultural policy by the European Commission in its audiovisual policy is an important indicator of the direction of EU cultural policy. The paper examines some of the implications for national cultural sovereignty of both audiovisual policy and the move to deregulation and privatisation in the wider cultural sector. It looks at initiatives of the Council of Europe and UNESCO to establish international cultural policies for social development to counter the effects of globalisation on the cultures of Europe. It concludes that this counter-effort is lagging in the European context, and that the tendency to describe culture as a resource does not help to distance the social agenda from the dominant commercial one.

This paper is concerned with a crisis in European cultural policy and the serious choices with which this crisis confronts us. Beginning with a brief overview of the history of cultural policy, it examines the way in which a particular definition of “culture” both promoted and was promoted by such a cultural policy. The paper argues that this traditional cultural policy has repeatedly set itself against and denigrated a notion of “pure” and “high” culture in opposition to that culture supposedly driven by money and the appeal to the “lowest common denominator”. However, this distinction was elaborated across more “mundane” political, legal and economic levels. This paper argues that on all the levels traditional cultural policy has reached a crisis, and that unless it confronts its own past distinctions and constructions, it will be unable to meet the challenge of the new commercialism. The paper ends with a description of what a democratic cultural policy could be.

1. Introduction Kiran Klaus Patel 2. The European Capitals of Culture in Context: Cultural Policy and the European Integration Process Uta Staiger 3. The Changing Concept of the European Capitals of Culture: Between the Endorsement of European Identity and City Advertising Jurgen Mittag 4. Europe's Several Capitals of Culture: From Celebration over Regeneration to Polycentric Capitalization Monica Sassatelli 5.Integration by Expertise: Transnational Experts and the European Commission in European Cultural Policies Kiran Klaus Patel 6. Florence European Capital of Culture 1986 and the Legitimization of an EEC Cultural Policy Oriane Calligaro 7. Wall-City Visions: Representations of Europe in the Context of 'Berlin - Kulturhauptstadt Europas' (1988) Marc Schalenberg 8. Peripheral ECOCs between Cultural Policy and Cultural Governance: The Case of Sibiu 2007 Daniel Habit 9. 'We keep on building': The 'unsuccessful' application of Gorlitz/Zgorzelec 2010 Annina Lottermann 10. Europeanization from the Margins? Istanbul's Cultural Capital Initiative and the Formation of European Cultural Policies Banu Karaca 11. Mediating European Heritage: Practices and Appropriations of European Heritage Policy in Serbia Claske Vos 12. Lefkosia/Lefkosa: Europeanization and the Politics of Culture in a Divided City Gisela Welz

JCMS: Journal of Common Market StudiesVolume 47, Issue 3 p. 676-677 The European Union and Culture: Between Economic Regulation and European Cultural Policy – By A. Littoz-Monnet AMELIA HADFIELD, AMELIA HADFIELD University of KentSearch for more papers by this author AMELIA HADFIELD, AMELIA HADFIELD University of KentSearch for more papers by this author First published: 05 May 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2009.02000_2.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume47, Issue3June 2009Pages 676-677 RelatedInformation

In an article that takes as its starting point two of the fundamental European Union (EU) principles regarding the issues of culture, cultural diversity and plurilingualism, the author researches the effects to date of the absence of a common European cultural policy. In two concrete cases – taxation on books and public lending rights – he shows that the absence of a common European cultural policy has resulted in practice in the inadequate implementation of these fundamental principles. Recent moves in relation to the formulation of a European constitution point to an awareness of the need for a more active European cultural policy that actually provides a framework within which member states would be independent in the formulation of their own cultural policy models.

The article starts with a discussion about the frequent statement that culture is a marginal area in politics. It proceeds with an analysis of the phenomenon and concept of “the cultural turn” and its possible consequences for cultural democracy. Then there follows a reflection on the potential power of religion and culture in political developments. After these introductory sections I present and discuss what I call five “democracy dimensions” of cultural policy: norms and ideologies; distribution of economic resources; institutional structures and decision‐making procedures; agents and interests in the policy‐making process; and access to and participation in cultural life. The conclusion is that under certain circumstances culture may mobilise huge masses of people in political actions but this is unlikely to happen in Western European democracies where culture in a long historical process has been privatised and isolated from big politics by the establishment of a specific sphere with its own structures, norms, logics and discourses. It is questionable if cultural policies will be more democratic under the reign of global capitalism and new liberalism. “The cultural turn” is an ambivalent phenomenon which cannot by itself bring about more cultural democracy. The future of cultural democracy cannot be decided for by cultural life or the cultural policy system themselves, it is dependent on what will happen to democracy as a total political system, of which cultural policy is only a small part.