Cultural policy
Cultural policy is the government actions, laws and programs that regulate, protect, encourage and financially (or otherwise) support activities related to the arts and creative sectors, such as painting, sculpture, music, dance, literature, and filmmaking, among others and culture, which may involve activities related to language, heritage and diversity.
Generally, this involves governments setting in place processes, legal classifications, regulations, legislation and institutions (e.g., galleries, museums, libraries, opera houses, etc.)
Similar significant organisations in the United Kingdom include the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), and Arts Council England.
"[1] A general trend in Western industrialized nations is a shift, since the 1970s and 1980s, away from solely supporting a small number of relatively elite, professionalized art forms and institutions (e.g., Classical music, painting, sculpture, art galleries) to also supporting amateur and community cultural and creative activities (e.g., community theatre) and cultural forms which were not considered part of the Western canon by previous generations (e.g., traditional music such as blues, World music, and so on).
Prior to the twentieth century, the arts were typically supported by the patronage of the church, aristocrats such as kings and queens, and wealthy merchants.
[2] An example of an arts policy initiative that supports excellence would be a government grant program which provides funding to the highest-achieving artists in the country.
A concrete example would be a program which funded an orchestra or jazz quartet and paid them to play free concerts in elementary schools.
A democratic state cannot be seen as simply indulging the aesthetic preferences of a few, however enlightened, or of overtly infusing art with political values.
"Dissemination was the key concept with the aim of establishing equal opportunity for all citizens to participate in publicly organized and financed cultural activities".
[8] "The problem with this policy [is] that, fundamentally, it intend[s] to create larger audiences for performances whose content [is] based on the experience of society's privileged groups.
Proponents of the elitist position argue that cultural policy should emphasize aesthetic quality as the determining criterion for public subvention.
The populist approach emphasizes a less traditional and more pluralist notion of artistic merit and consciously seeks to create a policy of cultural diversity.
However, these mutual stereotypes belie complementariness between two bookends of an artistically autonomous and politically accountable cultural policy.
[13][14] Musicologists David Hebert and Mikolaj Rykowski write that when "music is recognized as invaluable cultural heritage, entailing unique artefacts of intellectual property, new developments in this field then become acknowledged as important forms of social innovation;" However, they caution policy-makers that with glocalization, the rise of "'big data' offers unprecedentedly powerful tools but also inevitably entails many risks for all kinds of artists (both musicians and their collaborators in other arts) as well as the sustainability of traditional cultural practices.
"[15] Such a public-cultural policy would remain faithful to the highest standards of excellence from a broad range of aesthetic expressions while providing the widest possible access to people from different geographic locales, socio-economic strata, and educational background, as Dr. Mulcahy said.
Accordingly, the cultural sector has often argued its case from the secondary, ancillary benefits that result from public support for programs that are seemingly only aesthetic in nature.
[18] Non-American cultural institutions are less constrained by the need to maintain diversified revenue streams that demand high levels of earned income and individual and corporate donations to compensate for limited government appropriations.
On the other hand, cultural institutions everywhere are increasingly market-driven in their need for supplementary funds and as a justification for continued public support.
At root, a cultural policy is about creating public spheres that are not dependent upon profit motives nor validated by commercial values.
As political democracy is dependent upon the existence of civil society and socio-economic pluralism, cultural policy stands as an essential public commitment in realizing these fundamental preconditions.
Economic theory can be used to explain how reduced fiscal rates are expected to decrease prices and increase quantities of consumed cultural goods and services.
[20] The Princeton University e.g. founded its Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies 1994 “to improve the clarity, accuracy and sophistication of discourse about the nation's artistic and cultural life.”[21] The scientific approach is genuinely interdisciplinary, combining social sciences, a wide range of the humanities, jurisprudence and economics.
