2021-12-21

Authors

Vera Borges

is a Research Fellow at CIES-Iscte (University Institute of Lisbon) and invited professor of Sociology of Culture and Public Policies for Culture at FL-University of Lisbon. She completed a master’s degree in Culture, Communication and Information Technologies and a PhD in Sociology. She has established multiple interdisciplinary research programmes in art and culture and has published national and international books on different arts management topics.

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Participation and cultural democracy in Europe

Reformulating a cultural ethos

Cultural participation is repeatedly demanded by European cultural institutions. In the implementation, however, not all citizens are considered equally. Hence, it is about time for a reformulation and a rethinking.

In commemoration of Europe Day, the EU launched European Bauhaus. This initiative promotes an approach to sustainable and inclusive ways of life that should inspire us in the joint construction of our future path. In its Working Plan for Culture (2019-2022), the EU has already expressed the importance of cultural values to the construction of fairer and more cohesive societies, capable of accompanying digital developments and changes in the world of work. In times of pandemic crisis, this recognises the power of cultural values as a means of promoting the wellbeing of individuals and the sustainable development of our societies. Achieving a future capable of responding to the popular aspirations for wellbeing represents a priority (UNESCO). Consultation of the European Compendium of Cultural Policies conveys to what extent the potential factors for the development of member states rest on the growth of their cultural and creative sectors, on fostering culture and its intrinsic values, boosting participation by different segments of the population, nurturing the integration of all citizens within the framework of a cultural democracy. However, structural and institutional factors help us explain the differences and similarities in relation to the public policies for culture, the values and attitudes of Europeans towards their culture and demonstrating to what extent we need to rethink the paradigms supporting these public policies. Convergence strategies may benefit from developing the concept of full cultural citizenship.

The participatory turn towards full cultural citizenship

The concept has been broadly debated (Stevenson, 2003; Beaman, 2016) and is not free of any risk (De Jong, 2013). Our point of departure is associating the involvement of citizens, as they go about their daily lives, in cultural participation, social change, "mobilising the power of culture for social wellbeing” (Pais, 2021: 10). In sum, this reflects citizenship in conjunction with the protection of heritage and the environment, with eclecticism and cultural tolerance (Reeves, 2019; Johnston & Baumann, 2007), openness to different projects, events, artistic expressions, ethnic styles, cultural democracy, and the community creation of values (Pais, 2021: 10). Hence, these articulate this concept with another more expansive approach, instilled with all the nuances of the cultural democracy paradigm (Matarasso, 2019). This paradigm confers on citizens the power of participation and decision-making within the perspective of the common wellbeing. This therefore explains the sheer importance of knowing and developing more eclectic cultural orientations and longer lasting practices of citizen involvement across Europe, whether in local, national, or global initiatives. Approaching this concept involves an integrated understanding that cultural participation reflects in the interconnections and multiplicity of social, cultural, political, and ethnic ties and bonds of citizens.

Public policy paradigms and their own vision on cultural participation

In many European countries, participatory art has been placed on the agenda by intrinsically committed social movements and actors operating in conjunction with cultural and artistic institutions. Hence, further discussion is needed regarding the understandings, potentials, the relationships with local inhabitants, non-professionals, and how to promote equal access to culture and to participating in the public sphere. We contribute to this discussion through analysis of cultural participation and discussing digital access to participative experiences in the recent times of crisis. The participatory turning point must be conceived as a real tool for the empowerment of citizens as active subjects and stakeholders in public policies for their effective involvement in cultural, artistic, and social experiences and power-sharing decisions.

This strives to foster discussions among different perspectives on cultural participation in the successive cultural policy paradigms with each containing their own vision on what cultural participation is (Bonet & Négrier, 2018: 65-66). The paradigm of excellence was the first to appear following World War II and stipulates the role of audiences as subordinate to quality according to a most controversial and subjective criterion. Programmers and public policy decision-makers, in association with critics, belong to an endogamous group of professionals excluding those not sharing the dominant cultural values.

The second paradigm, cultural democratization, provides the main justification for investment in cultural venues, increases in budgetary funding for culture and its prominent territorial role. The main purpose here is to facilitate access for the largest number of people coupled with the production of high-quality culture that the market would not otherwise supply. Under this paradigm, social disparities persist, audiences passively participate in projects developed by artistic directors. Cultural participation still has a long way to go whether in countries with long histories of public policies (such as the French case, Coulangeon, 2013) or not (such as the Portuguese case, Pais et al., 2021; Betzler et al. 2020), whatever in situ or digital cultural practices.

The third paradigm of cultural democracy emerged in the 1970s out of criticism led by socio-cultural professionals who perceived the limitations of the two preceding conceptions. Cultural democracy proposes there is scope for each social segment of the population to gain recognition for their own cultural practices in keeping with how a hierarchy of cultures is illegitimate and cultural products need conveying widely among an undifferentiated set of citizens. This primarily developed a participatory discourse in conjunction with the enrichment of audiences. In the late 1980s, within the context of discussions on the preservation of cultural diversity and the protection of cultural rights, the goals of cultural democracy underwent a revival and have become a universal model interlinked with the concept of cultural development and inclusive societies.

Cultural participation as a central value of democratic societies

Nowadays, participation is defined as a common right and thus perceived as a method that could always be improved with the potential for openness in artistic and cultural production for broader sections of society. However, there is also the "dark side” of participative projects that fail to encounter the desired outcome: a genuine driver of cultural participation and the active involvement of citizens. The lack of power-sharing and decisions and rhetorical discourse around participation can be perceived in some cultural participatory experiences in Europe, influenced by inflexible models of arts organisations, inequalities between participants and a lack of diversity in the individuals and groups involved in these experiences. After all, cultural distinction (Bourdieu, 1984) alongside the risk of accentuating elitist forms of cultural consumption and the production of less eclectic cultural contents, there prevails the hierarchization of cultures, aggravating forms of social exclusion and the fragilization of minorities (Dupin-Meynard & Négrier, 2020: 228-229). This remains true even for the long-term participatory projects run by experienced organizations.

Regular participants in cultural activities and artistic experiences are usually citizens with higher education qualifications, from more prestigious social backgrounds and with better positions in the socio-professional structure despite the contemporary eclectic cultural profiles, closely interconnected with the digital cultural omnivorism of populations (Borges, 2021). An approach to the importance of digital artistic co-creation and participation features among the responses to the crisis by the major cultural institutions, nevertheless, we do not overlook the important role of independent professionals that create poetic and localized participative experiences or the participative experiences of small local inhabitant assemblies - as happened in Lisbon (Rego and Borges, 2021). An enormous variety of multi-level participative projects, run by artists and local inhabitants, located in European countries and regions thereby emerges. Paradigmatic action-research from the Creative European programme entitled Be SpectACTive! (started in 2014) is today in its second edition with 15 EU countries working on collaborations with spectators or the ARGOS Project, also funded by the Creative Europe programme, which brings together five university partners (Rennes, Lisbon, Lille, Antwerp and Peloponnese) and different artistic institutions in different territories and local inhabitants of different ages and social and cultural backgrounds (Borges, 2020).

Conclusions

Firstly, participation constitutes a desired end of improving public action and emerges as a signal of quality - endowing public decisions with increased legitimacy. It is also a tool for better public management and decision-making. Participation experiences can contribute to not further aggravating inequalities in access to artistic and cultural goods and bring individuals closer to sharing decisions taken in the interests of their communities. However, we certainly cannot continue doing everything in the same way.

Secondly, institutions, large and small, and occasional projects, are a key domain. Achieving a participatory goal requires moments of responsive work and mutual exchanges that promote dialogue (Bohm, 1996) and critical and reflective exchanges between the different project participants. Any discussion on the contemporary participatory turn involves looking at an infinite scope for collaboration between people of different ages and backgrounds and how individuals themselves can produce different levels of knowledge and involvement as co-creators and direct participants in decision-making processes. The re-discovery of cultural democracy in the post-Coronavirus context conveys how this crisis might be an opportunity and a value to continue improving moments of dialogue.

Thirdly, by generating dialogue, as the European Bauhaus initiative does, we mutually help each other to build territorial cohesion, with better economic, social, and household resources. Institutions, structures, and projects share information and learn as a group. More than a community with common interests; this implies the sharing of resources and efforts to address recurring problems by means of engagement and the informal learning that can thereby be achieved. If only very few cultural projects can involve the youngest and most socially vulnerable groups with lesser levels of participation, some segments of the population continue to be left behind and cultural institutions lose out on an essential driver of cultural democracy. More mediation strategies and a more critical path of reflexivity are required to gain insights for better political decision-making. Public policies thus need to take the refoundation of a new cultural ethos into account and continue to encourage active citizenship and cultural participation, and alongside more democratic organizations.

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