Creating a Level Playing Field

Only a few would choose a place like Künzelsau, located very remotely in southern Germany, as conference venue. Although the city is idyllically situated, it is quite small despite its own university campus. But this is precisely what makes up the atmosphere of the Network Brokering Exchange's workshops and gatherings, as the international participants were able to experience once again this year. This kind of remoteness ensures closeness among the participants, concentrated discussions, and informal exchange - when in search of a place for a nightcap you inevitably meet each other in the only remaining open bar and seamlessly move from professional discussions to more personal encounters.

 

Despite the obstacles to getting there, the network's conference from 23 to 25 May brought researchers and practitioners from the cultural sector from all continents to Künzelsau to exchange studies, projects and experiences on the subject of 'Democratizing the arts and the arts sector'. Among the discussed topics were aspects such as 

 

 

 

Apart from the personal atmosphere, which is due to the commitment of the organisers Raphaela Henze and Victoria Durrer (who unfortunately could not be there this time), the diverse mix of participants makes every event of the network an eye-opening and perspective-extending experience. This is especially true, according to my personal perception, for people who, like me, have a life and work background in the Global North. Why? This question is exactly the point that the network has once again addressed. Arts professionals from Western countries share a working environment with often pretty similar career paths, structures, problems and working conditions. Our private cultural and media consumption is also dominated by this geographical area and its topics. This and the fact that English is part of our colloquial language make us feel international and global - and thus lets us overlook a large part of the rest of the world. We remain largely within our range. Spending two days in a small town with people who talk about their experiences in Nigeria, Ghana, Brazil, Egypt or the Philippines can therefore be very enlightening, especially when it comes to democracy.

 

When it comes to "democracy", most people first think of a form of government on a national level, the rule of the people. But democracy can also be thought of at larger and smaller levels. Equal opportunities and rights are also fundamental to democracy and play an important role in the context of cultural management.

 

 

Numerous speakers and discussions at the Annual Gathering focused on democracy on a small scale. For example, in his opening keynote, J.P. Singh, Professor of International Commerce and Policy at George Mason University in Washington D.C., spoke about the importance of small cultural initiatives and community projects to strengthen local populations and minorities. These often receive little attention, recognition or funding, he stressed, especially in the countries of the Western world with their large arts institutions. The dominance of "high culture" was too strong, but its benefits, especially for people with a lower formal educational background or income, were often low. This does not mean that indigenous, socio-cultural art forms are always more democratic, as Singh emphasized. The exclusion of women from Bedouin poetry or cultural heritage sites in India are good examples of the need to pay attention to equal participation. In any case, the ambition should not be to integrate community arts into the value chains of high culture or the creative economy, but to recognize their own value more strongly.

 

In countries such as the USA, Canada or Australia, this is all the more true as in addition to the non-white population, the indigenous population is also often neglected in terms of cultural services. In the USA, for example, less than ten percent of cultural funding goes to Native American artists and arts institutions. In the panel "One, No One and One Hundred Thousand: Social Inclusion & The Arts" Gauri Shinde, Program Director at Chamber Music America (CMA), explained that only twenty percent of applications for the jazz program she leads come from people of color and even less are funded. This is alarming for an art form that not only originally comes from black culture, but whose main sponsor is the CMA for the entire USA and which has a significantly lower total funding volume than, for example, classical music. 

 

Just like Antonio Cuyler, Associate Professor of Arts Administration at Florida State University, in his lecture "Using the creative justice model to measure progress on access, diversity, equity, inclusion in the U.S. cultural sector" at the same panel, Shinde emphasized that approaches to promoting diversity and equality are important, but often miss the mark. For many minorities do not feel addressed by tenders if they are not explicitly mentioned in them, or the information does not reach them in the first place. Well meant is not always well done here. Instead, as both speakers emphasized, concrete statistics and goals as well as a direct addressing of the communities are needed to promote arts programs for and with minorities. How else could you know whether you are actually reaching more people with different backgrounds? Here, the following discussion showed how strongly such studies depend on the respective geographical context, because in Europe, for example, a survey of "race" could easily be perceived negatively or the query of sexual orientation in the context of funding or job advertisements could be mistaken.

 

In the panel "Sibling Rivalry: The Case of Culture and its Organization", Johan Kolsteeg, Assistant Professor at the Arts, Media and Culture Department of the University of Groningen, Cat MacKeigan, an arts and culture consultant and researcher on Cultural Policy in the Canadian region Nova Scotia, Canada, and Mihai Florea, artist and researcher on Cultural Policy in the UK, each spoke about the limits of democracy in national or regional arts sectors. They similarly pointed out that even the best approaches to improving the world through cultural funding sometimes completely ignore the working realities of artists and cultural professionals. This is because the boundaries of democracy here often lie between cultural policy on the one hand and funding recipients on the other. The latter are often neither included in programme planning nor are the evaluation criteria made transparent or oriented on actual working methods. Florea stressed in this context that programmes for diversity or equal participation, for example, would therefore sometimes turn into pure propaganda.

 

With regard to the democratization of the arts towards their visitors, Kolsteeg emphasized that especially in the Western cultural sector, which primarily focuses on academic criteria, it is still assumed that culture and art can either be of high quality or participative. Participation would not be understood as an essential element, but as an admission to the lay consumers. But as studies repeatedly show, top-down participatory approaches in classical arts institutions in the first place attract their usual visitors and thus hardly contribute to democratization. The fundamental question should therefore rather be: What can people give to the arts, what can arts professionals make of it, and what can they give back to the people?

 

A positive example of democracy on a small scale was presented by Jason Vitorillo, Lecturer in Arts Management at Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore. He introduced the cultural funding system of his home country, the Philippines. Due to the great spatial distances of this country consisting of many thousands of islands, the support here is less focused on flagship institutions in large cities, which most people would never be able to visit, but instead forty percent are directed towards grass root approaches and community projects to strengthen indigenous forms of culture. Democracy in the Philippines may currently be experiencing a phase of unrest. In terms of cultural democracy and the relevance of culture for all people, however, it is ahead of many Western countries.

 

 

This comparison may seem a little strange, but it leads perfectly to the subject of democracy on a large scale. For in addition to the unequal relationship between the different arts sectors and between cultural policy and practice within democratic countries, there is still an imbalance in the promotion and support of culture between the world regions in a global context. This is made clear by the problematic pair of terms of developed and developing countries, which is still used regularly. It perpetuates a power relation that is not only about political and economic strength and quality of life, but also about a cultural progress in society according to Western standards. 

 

This is also reflected in the field of culture, for example in how much paternalism there still is between Global North and South even in cases where southern countries obviously do better than their "development supporters", as J.P. Singh stressed. He referred not only to cultural management in the Global South, which is sometimes considered less professional than in Western countries, but also to the inequality between art forms. Thus, international cultural institutions from Northern countries would often only foster or export their specific kind of art productions instead of asking for the needs of the local creatives. For example, in her impressive presentation, Zainab Musa Shallangwa spoke about the relevance and problems of museums in Nigeria. Her description of a local museum located right next to one of Boko Haram's headquarters, which not only lost almost all its visitors and therefore its financial resources, but whose employees were also exposed to permanent danger, could not have been more eye-opening. This example shows that not single art productions are needed, but a support for broader and sustainable cultural infrastructures and community art forms. But in the international context, community arts often were more sustainable, had more impact and needed more specific support instead of integrating local art forms into the recognition logic of the Western arts market.

 

Raphaela Henze also emphasized the dominance of Western culture in her lecture, especially with regard to language. For example, English academic literature was widespread in the Global North and regarded as internationally representative, while publications and insights from other languages and cultures were hardly perceived. This also applies to the education of young cultural managers, who are hardly ever confronted with forms or perceptions of art and culture in other regions of the world. In addition, the learning of other languages than English in Europe and North America is only seldomly required. All this promotes the - often unconscious - bias of Western arts professionals with regard to their own work and thinking, which is counterproductive in times of globalization and transnational projects and deepens existing power diparities instead of promoting democracy.

 

 

Although it is often difficult to leave behind accustomed and trained approaches and ways of thinking, it is necessary in view of the gap between the different parts of the worlds at different levels of cultural work. Events such as the Annual Gathering of the Network Brokering Intercultural Exchange contribute significantly to this - and the response of the participants was correspondingly positive:

 

"I have participated in some other conferences about the topic diversity, arts and culture, but few of them were for me so interesting as the BIE meeting. Having the chance of starting with a quote from Paulo Freire (a Brazilian author and researcher) and in the last day having a quote from Audre Lorde (a self-called "black lesbian feminist mother poet warrior” from the US) already says a lot about the enlightening experiences and discussions we shared, as well as the rich connections we made having people from all continents.” - Suelen Silva, a cultural manager from Brazil and German Chancellor Fellow of Humboldt Foundation. 

 

"I sincerely appreciated and enjoyed the Annual Gathering because it was a great opportunity to meet people from different cultures, countries, disciplines and with abundance experiences. I really learned a lot and I am proud to partner with the network.” Umar Lawal Yusuf, lecturer at the Sociology and Anthropology Department at the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria.

 

"I am particularly impressed with the fact that a diversity of speakers and topics were featured in the conference. It is not solely an intellectual engagement but also an affective one as the speakers are genuine and willing to openly share their innovations and successes, along with their struggles and obstacles. It is uncommon in my experience, and is deeply enriching!” - Alex Tam, Centre Executive of the Centre for Research and Development in Visual Arts, Hong Kong

 

"Encountering and learning about obstacles to the mere possibility of sustaining artistic expression with struggles across funding, regulating bodies, post-colonial narratives, and negotiating the traditional and contemporary from this amazing gathering of international culture workers was inspiring, and refreshing, and I left feeling hopeful. I look forward to reconnecting and returning to this gathering." - Gargi Shindé, New York, USA

 

It is quite difficult to bring all the input and topics of these two days to the point, as the length of this report shows. For me personally, the difference between equity and equality is probably the best way to sum it up: the goal of international cultural management should not be to create equal opportunities for all, but specific opportunities depending on the preconditions that enable everyone to follow the same path.