Cultural Policy-making Research Articles

Cultural Branding in the Arab Region

The comparative study of cultural policies in the Arab region remains a relatively underexplored domain, particularly in how these policies influence nation branding and nation-building efforts. This exploratory study seeks to contribute to this nascent field by adopting a comparative lens to examine the cultural policies of three Arab nations: the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Through a document analysis of key policies from these countries, this research unveils the intricate ways cultural strategies are employed to articulate and disseminate national, ethical and political ideologies. The article articulates how each country’s approach to cultural policy—commodification in the UAE, securitisation in Egypt and religionisation in Saudi Arabia—reflects and is shaped by unique local, regional and global power dynamics. By contextualising these policies within broader frameworks of market forces, security concerns and religious influences, the study offers insights into the complex interplay between cultural policymaking and nation branding in the Arab world.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: EXPLORING PARTICIPATORY TERRITORIAL APPROACHES IN MUNICIPAL CULTURE AGENDAS

This paper investigates the role of community engagement in municipal culture agendas through participatory territorial approaches. Municipalities increasingly recognize the importance of involving communities in cultural development initiatives to ensure inclusivity, diversity, and sustainability. Drawing on case studies and theoretical frameworks, this study explores how participatory approaches are implemented in municipal culture agendas to empower local communities, foster cultural expression, and enhance social cohesion. Key elements such as community involvement, stakeholder collaboration, cultural mapping, and resource allocation are examined to elucidate the dynamics of participatory territorial approaches. By examining the intersection of communityengagement and cultural policymaking at the municipal level, this research contributes to understanding effective strategies for promoting cultural vibrancy and community well-being.

Epistemological shifts, power imbalances and conflicts at documenta fifteen: decolonial cultural policy conceptions beyond Eurocentric universalism

ABSTRACT Focusing on the epistemic dimension of exclusionary institutional structures in the German cultural sector in relation to cultural production, this article searches for decolonial cultural policy conceptions that are critical of knowledge-related power imbalances and their entanglements. By taking the international art exhibition documenta fifteen in Kassel in 2022 as a case study, the paper examines the community- and collectivity-based practices and methodologies introduced by the Indonesian artist collective ruangrupa. In particular, this empirically grounded inquiry focuses on ruangrupa’s lumbung values as a proposition of epistemic pluriversality. In this way, it also reveals various conflicts that occurred before and during the fifteenth edition of the exhibition, arisen from epistemological differences in perspectives, narratives, aesthetics and artistic methodologies between colonial and capitalism-critical cultural practices and Western art institutions. Following the tenets of the decolonial turn and decolonial thought, the paper explores alternatives to the dominant Eurocentric universalism of knowledge through the example of documenta fifteen, transcending the binary of either/or and advocating pluriversality as a universal option, rather than Eurocentric universalism as a singular totality, as proposed by Walter Mignolo. Following Catherine Walsh, the quest for the recognition and dissemination of pluriversal perspectives is intrinsically linked to the search for other ways of knowing, thinking, theorising and being that resist totalising power. In doing so, the authors ultimately seek to outline some attributes of decolonial conceptions of cultural policymaking, aiming at reducing epistemological inequalities in accessing cultural production for marginalised and racialised artists and cultural practitioners.

Discourses of cultural diversity and inclusion in film policy: The case of Flanders (2002–2022)

This article examines how Flemish film policy actors and industry stakeholders have conceptualized, framed and operationalized cultural diversity and inclusion over the past two decades (2002–2022). Drawing on critical discourse and interpretive policy analysis of policy documents and a series of in-depth expert interviews, we investigate how discourses of diversity in cultural policymaking are consistently shaped by (neo-)liberal continuations of deregulation, state neutrality and marketization. This article identifies three discursive shifts over the years, highlighting their complex tensions with the persistent, liberal-egalitarian principle of difference-blind universalism. Framing these tensions as a major obstacle in achieving a paradigmatic policy shift toward the inclusion of ethnic/diasporic minorities in Flemish cinema, we advance a more comprehensive way of understanding why media diversity policies have, so far, proven inadequate.

Entangled History between Semi-Peripheries: Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Fibre Art on the Swedish Art Scene circa 1970

This article examines what role Sweden, as a presumed periphery in Northeastern Europe, played at the turn of the 1960s when Magdalena Abakanowicz and her fellow Polish artists working in fibre material broke new ground moving away from traditional tapestry by working with complex three-dimensional forms. Using the method of a history of crossing, histoire croisée, the article shows how exhibitions with Abakanowicz’s fibre art served many interests at the time, the artist’s own creative development and international career, Swedish art institutions eager to display current experiments in soft environments, the burgeoning Swedish cultural policymaking, and larger structures of cultural diplomacy. The article thus proposes to understand the relation between Sweden and Poland as two semi-peripheries, where the dominant narrative of modern art stemming from Western centres influencing the rest was, in many ways, circumvented.

Mediations of cultural policymaking during COVID-19: British newspaper reporting of the Culture Recovery Fund

ABSTRACT At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, cultural policymaking frequently came to the fore in media debates about the impact of the crisis and measures to alleviate it. In this article, we present evidence of how newspaper coverage of the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) identified and framed competing perceptions of the relative utility of policymaking in this context, while also problematising familiar assumptions about the CCIs among policymakers, journalists and (arguably) the public. Specifically, we analysed British news and editorial items (n.4,162) published from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020. It offers a novel investigation into the ways in which media and policy rhetoric overlap, interact and influence each other. In doing so, this article contributes a unique perspective to the study and practice of cultural policy, bringing to light the typically underexplored role of the news media in shaping the narratives driving cultural policy deliberation and action.

Cultural Policy Formation and State-Society Relations: Culture-led Urban Redevelopment of Enninglu in Guangzhou

Using the Enninglu redevelopment project as a case, this article examines how local governments in China pacify urban protests, consolidate the political legitimacy of urban agendas, and re-regulate state-society relations through cultural policy-making. The Enninglu urban renewal project has experienced three waves of social resistance since 2006. Accordingly, the government has made three rounds of urban policy changes, successively incorporating heritage preservation policies, creative economy policies, and public participation policies in response to different social demands. The case of Enninglu illustrates that cultural city-making in China is not merely “state-led,” but is assembled in a process of conflict between the state and society at the local level. This article argues for bringing the perspective of “state-society relations” to the study of Asian cultural/creative cities and further proposes a “legitimacy framework” to conceptualize the mechanisms of urban cultural policy-making in the context of social resistance.

The REED typology: understanding market-orientation and instrumental values in cultural policy across Europe

ABSTRACT This article develops a typology of cultural policy in 30 European nation-states, based on the centrality of “neoliberal” market-based rationalities in subsidised cultural fields. This Resistant, Emergent, Established, and Dominant (REED) typology is based on two measures of marketisation, market-orientation and instrumental values, which are found in European “cultural policy assemblages” (networked systems of cultural policies, cultural policymaking bodies, cultural organisations, and cultural intermediaries). We show that all cultural policy assemblages in European nation-states are marketised to some degree, suggesting that Europe is “post-marketised”. Further, we find a heterogenous range of marketised practices, showing different instantiations of marketisation across nation-states. REED offers a new prism to conceptualise Europe’s subsidised cultural fields. Grounded in actual policy orientations, it overcomes limitations of earlier typologies and, crucially, it provides both a descriptive modelling of the contemporary European cultural field and an analytical methodology for comparing nation-states relative to marketisation.

National identity, transnational ideology, and cultural policy in Iran

ABSTRACT The question of Iranian national identity under the Islamic Republic has been the subject of much academic debate in the past two decades but little empirical research has been conducted to assess the government’s cultural policy on national identity. This article seeks to scrutinize The Islamic Republic of Iran’s cultural policy vis-à-vis the Iranian national identity. We use a content analysis approach to explore the Iranian government’s cultural policy toward Iranian national identity. To do so, we analyze the documents of the highest body of cultural policy-making, Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution (SCCR), at two levels to explore their relationship with Iranian identity. The results of our content analysis at level 1 unveil that the Iranian national identity, as a whole, has a marginal role in the SCCR’s documents. Content analysis at level 2 (i.e. semiotic analysis) explains why such a peripheral status exists and delineates that cultural policy based on the SCCR’s transnational ideology represents a situation whose most paramount features are (a) substituting a part of Iranian identity for the whole of it, (b) defining a transnational sphere as the main subject in adopting cultural policy, and (c) describing Iran as a part of the Islamic Ummah and its forerunner in the universal defiance against the West.

A public value typology for public service broadcasting in the UK

ABSTRACT Rapid changes in audience habits, media technologies and market dynamics have prompted searching questions about the role and relevance of public service broadcasting (PSB) in the modern digital media landscape. In the UK, where cultural policymaking is increasingly politicised, the normative ideals traditionally associated with PSB are being openly contested. This article evaluates how PSB generates varied forms of “public value” of benefit to viewing and listening publics, policy stakeholders and the creative sector. On the basis of its qualitative analysis of policy documents and related research literatures over two decades, a typology of six values – social, cultural, economic, industrial, representational and civic – is identified and critiqued across regulatory and institutional frameworks. In assessing the challenges, risks and opportunities for sustaining these public values, this article offers its typology for informing cultural and media policy debates on the future of PSB in the UK and beyond.

Culture is Digital and the shifting terrain of UK cultural policy

ABSTRACT In this paper, a change to the remit and title of a UK government department provides a starting point for reflection on the growing role of digital technologies in the re-imagination of UK cultural policy. An early strategic report produced by the re-named DCMS was entitled Culture is Digital. Identifying the UK’s cultural and technology sectors as ‘the ultimate power couple,’ this report directs the cultural sector towards the use of technology to enhance public engagement and to improve technical skills through the development of collaborations with technology companies. Reflecting on the place of DCMS in UK cultural policymaking and drawing on analysis of this report and associated strategic documents, including responses and updates produced in the light of the Covid pandemic, the paper analyses the claims made about the elision between culture and the digital and their consequences for the status of cultural policy within the British state.

Valuing cultural diversity? A plea for a receptive cultural policy

The promotion of immigration-generated diversity has been on the agenda of the cultural policy in Germany for an extended period. Integration-oriented objectives primarily determine the policy discourse on cultural diversity, often supported through intercultural funding programmes. Parallel to this, the long-standing debate on improving access conditions to publicly funded cultural institutions for immigrants compels cultural policy to introduce measures to accommodate cultural diversity in the cultural sphere. In this article, I explore the interplay between the values, reflexes and habits of cultural policymaking on the lack of immigration-related diversity in the cultural landscape. Through dispositive strategy as a methodical tool of discourse analysis, I first examine the conduct, motives and concepts of cultural policy shaping the discourse on immigration-generated diversity. Then, I introduce a constructive policy approach for reducing access imbalances to the cultural scene, and, lastly, I propose an equality-based cultural policy framework.

Conviction, Votes, or Nationalism?

Why do policymakers pursue cultural policies? The existing literature presents several potential answers but no study has surveyed them in a comprehensive way. In this essay, I examine a diverse array of factors behind cultural policymaking. Combining domestic and international perspectives, I identify three major motivations: intrinsic demand, constituency demands and nation-building objectives. I employ a mix of qualitative and quantitative evidence to explore the hypotheses stemming from these different decision-making dynamics.

French connection UK: the Dinard film festival and the politics of culture

ABSTRACT This article looks at the thirty-year history of the Dinard Film Festival (until 2018, the Dinard Festival of British Film), with a particular focus on the financial support provided by bodies with industrial and/or cultural remits: specifically, the UK Film Council, the British Council and the British Film Institute. As I discuss, Dinard is a significant case study for understanding the British film-industrial relationship with France, but also for analysing the interrelationship between economic and cultural policy-making in the British film industry. As I also argue, looking at the history of the Dinard festival offers a significant example of the ways such showcases for ‘national cinema’ are bound up with the shifting contexts of film-industry policymaking. As I conclude, the changing economic fortunes in British film, and the economic contexts informing UK film policy, have not only impacted on Dinard, but also given the festival a renewed outlook – as well as a more political one in the recent contexts of the UK’s EU referendum and ‘Brexit’.

“A Healthy Nationalism”: The Inclusion of Indigenous Australians in the Federal Cultural Policymaking of the 1960s and 1970s

ABSTRACT This article argues that the inclusion of Indigenous Australian arts within federal cultural policymaking transitioned during the 1960s and 1970s from a salvage paradigm of value towards policies articulating self-determined Indigenous representation and the potential for a “healthy nationalism”. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (1964), the Aboriginal Arts Board (1973) and their joint proposal for a Gallery of Aboriginal Australia (1975) form the basis of this discussion and are representative of federal initiatives to “salvage”, collect and promote Indigenous Australian culture within the national image. Despite commitments to controlling Indigenous representations as a “tribal” phenomenon, the late 1960s saw cultural nationalism flourish and Indigenous Australians achieve symbolic recognition in the 1967 Referendum. By the 1970s, shifting scholarly paradigms transformed artistic patronage towards a policy of self-determination for the arts as Indigenous activism succeeded in forcing change within cultural institutions. Proposals for a Gallery of Aboriginal Australia typified the aspirations of policymakers who sought a greater Indigenous emphasis in Australia's cultural identity and, for Indigenous people, promised to reform colonial representations. The gallery's delayed emergence revealed the declining cultural vision of previous decades as Indigenous Australians continued to push the structures of governance to value their cultural knowledge.

Public Strategies for the Promotion of Urban Art: The Lisbon Metropolitan Area Case

Urban art has emerged as a new feature of cities in recent decades. Its wide success as a fresh, youthful, and cosmopolitan artistic movement has elicited the attention of urban planners, who increasingly use it in their strategies for urban development. This artistic expression has been understood as a resource to be used in urban and cultural policymaking, especially when it comes to urban reassessment and marketing. This dynamic is embedded in a paradigm where the arts and culture are increasingly understood as resources for urban development and city marketing. In this article, we draw on qualitative empirical material (interviews, official documents, press releases, websites) from an ongoing research project in the context of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. One of the aims of this project is to analyze the link between local authorities and urban art aiming at understanding existing representations and the kinds of strategies that were put in place for its management. We conclude that largely local authorities use urban art to achieve three main strategic goals: the strategy of “landscape construction and urban reassessment,” the strategy of “refashioning the city image/city branding,” and the strategy of “social promotion of stigmatized territories and communities.”

Review: Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries, by K. E. Goldschmitt

Review: <i>Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries</i>, by K. E. Goldschmitt

Spatializing authoritarian neoliberalism by way of cultural politics: City, nation and the European Union in Gdańsk’s politics of cultural policy formation

This paper develops perspectives which seek to spatialize authoritarian neoliberalism through arguing for greater engagement with the politics of urban cultural policy formation in the neglected context of post-socialist East and Central Europe. Through analyzing the politics of urban cultural policy-making in Gdańsk, Poland, the paper spatializes authoritarian neoliberalism by exploring how relations between the urban and the national, and between the urban and the supranational, shape urban cultural policy, drawing upon literatures on political economy, policy mobilities, cultural policy research, and the concepts of authoritarian neoliberalism and the relational-territorial nexus. Gdańsk is a liberally run city, strongly aligned with the European Union (EU), opposed to the authoritarian neoliberal national level politics in Poland. The paper analyses urban-national tensions and relationships between Gdańsk and the EU to unpack the contested spatial nature of authoritarian neoliberalism.

Modelling diversity: cultural district policies in Doha and Singapore

ABSTRACT Over the last twenty years, cities around the world have seen the multiplication of cultural district projects, which aim to concentrate cultural organisations in a circumscribed urban space, or to label a neighbourhood’s cultural scene. This paper examines the adoption and adaptation of a globally circulating cultural policy model as an instrument of urban governance. Moving away from the notion of policy transfer, understood as a neutral and unidirectional process through which successful culture-led development models spread to other contexts, I show how local actors mobilise external references to position themselves in a transnational cultural policymaking field, and construct their city as a model. I compare the multi-scalar politics of urban modelling in Doha and Singapore, where globally circulating culture-led development models have been introduced not only as instruments of economic growth, but also as diversity management tools. On the one hand, cultural districts serve as discursive nation building/branding instruments to project an imagined identity locally and internationally. On the other hand, urban elites can mobilise cultural districts to make strategic shifts in the diversity management discourse, through an engagement with the urban environment, and the co-optation civil society actors at multiple scales.

Policy-making as an emotionally-charged arena: the emotional geographies of urban cultural policy-making

ABSTRACT Analysis of the role emotions play in a range of social processes has increased significantly, but is neglected in the context of cultural policy-making. Recent literatures in feminist and emotional geographies draw attention to how emotions are emergent in, and play a role in shaping, a broad range of social contexts and processes, while other literatures stress the need to ‘personalise’ the expert and consider the emotional aspects of planning. Inspired by these literatures we deploy the notion of ‘affective urbanism’ to study how emotions are interwoven with cultural policy spaces in the city and explore the ‘emotional regimes’ that incorporate emotions with the multi-scalar politics that is shaping urban cultural policy-making. This is undertaken through an analysis of emotions in the working lives and political contexts of cultural policy-makers in Stockholm (Sweden), Gdańsk (Poland) and Manchester (UK). Overall the paper seeks to develop a research agenda that places emotions centrally in studies of cultural policy formation and implementation.