The State of Culture report published
Democracies need a future and the promise of change. Such visions of a better future motivate citizens to exercise their freedoms and participate in democratic life. It is in the arts and culture that futures are imagined and citizens gain their democratic agency.
In the light of the big, and often disorientating, transformations that our societies undergo, arts and culture are where we find meaning, critical reflections on the past and the present, and compelling images of the future. To paraphrase Brian Eno: in a world that is developing so fast and yet is fragmenting so quickly, culture is this “fantastic conversation” that keeps societies together and is crucial for our collective future.
UNESCO defines culture as “the distinct spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features characterising a society. It encompasses arts, lifestyle, human rights, value systems, traditions and beliefs. Culture shapes individuals and societies, fostering unity through shared values and traditions.” Following this definition, it is difficult to think of any other concept that is as all-encompassing and fundamental to everyone’s life.
Isn´t it then, well, ´weird´ that culture plays such a marginal role in politics and the public discourse? Culture is not part of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, for instance, and is only referenced in it as an indicator for a limited number of specific goals; nor is it mentioned in any State of the Union speech by the President of the European Commission. Culture is dependent on ‘breadcrumb’ funding and subject to heavy restrictions through what can often be very narrow funding priorities.
So, why is the cultural sector in such a fragile condition? Is it possible that, when fighting for our emancipation among the big family of important political portfolios, we are distracted into using arguments that may actually not be ours?
Culture Action Europe (CAE) is driven by its belief in culture as a fundamental building block for the common future of a Europe open to the world, for the sustainability of our planet and for plural, open and caring societies. Yet, as the major European network of cultural networks, organisations, artists, cultural workers, activists, academics and policymakers, we experience in our daily work a reality of distrust that keeps us from unfolding that potential.
Distrust by funders, politicians and opinion leaders, keeps culture largely isolated in the margins, and keeps its institutions and workers in a precarious situation.
This same distrust is at the root of another very serious problem: it keeps us, the cultural and creative sectors and its workers, in a defensive state, fending off constant threats of elimination and arguing for our value and our right to exist.
These defensive arguments mean answering questions from others that we might ask differently ourselves. For example, what do we contribute to the economy, how can we make cultural institutions carbon neutral and how do we contribute to health and wellbeing? While these are very relevant questions, they keep us so busy that we hardly get the breathing space to act upon our own questions: how can we rebuild our economy to be fair and just; how will we change the narrative to gain broad support for climate action; how can we ensure representation of our societies’ diversity in its institutions; and where are our compelling images of a better, sustainable future?
But while we answer ´their´ questions for our survival’s sake, our ability to free ourselves from the self-inflicted dependency on others’ agendas becomes further constrained. Our questions remain behind expedient and ‘acceptable’ masks, our arguments conforming to other disciplines or to the expectations of funding organisations.
Policymaking in the post neo-liberal era apparently still depends on a kind of ‘hard evidence’, on indicators of success such as returns on investment to justify the spending of taxpayers’ money. So, we keep answering those questions and produce study after study to justify that we are worthy of investment. But is there really ´no alternative´ to these ‘calculated futures’?
Where is our political argument concerned with how we see humans in our society? In other words, how people relate to each other in communities and how they can not only enjoy the ‘negative freedom’ to consume, to vote and to ‘like’, but also the ‘positive freedom’ to make informed choices, build communities, take political responsibility and lead a life that allows for meaning making? These voices are hard to hear in the political discourse, and even when we do hear them, such as in the Cáceres Declaration, they sound like a faraway echo shortly afterwards.
Consequently, when, during our struggle to survive, we eventually summon the energy to take the floor and articulate our belief in the ‘intrinsic value of culture’, perhaps we could give an answer that might not be satisfying to everyone but which is concise and that we can stand behind.
CAE’s mission is to maintain an “ongoing dialogue and knowledge sharing between the European cultural sector and policymakers. CAE advocates for transformative cultural policies that recognise and support culture as a sector in its own right and a catalyst contributing to other sectors.” So here is the challenge: what is the sector’s own right?
In 2023, we have embarked on a year-long joint exercise between the board of CAE and its team and membership to co-develop a new strategy. Three areas of focus have been identified: (1) Cultural Democracy and Cultural Leadership; (2) Sustainability; and (3) The Cultural Ecosystem.
Whereas many of CAE’s ongoing and new activities were subsumed under the categories of Sustainability and The Cultural Ecosystem, the heading Cultural Democracy and Leadership infers an ambition to ask more fundamental questions: how can we as cultural sectors be a foundational element in our societies – one that is shaped by everyone and leaves no one behind? It also asks what kind of leadership is needed within the sector and how it can be empowered to unfold its transformative potential.
We have introduced two guiding principles. The principle of Care, that we have developed with our members during the 2023 annual conference, on the basis of the ethics of care, in which we not only ask ´what is just´, but also ´how to relate´. We have called the second principle ´Beyond´, in which we put attention to the future to not only ask where we can go, not only to react to urgencies, but to proactively define where we want to go.
Care and Beyond underpin the strategic priorities of Cultural Democracy and Cultural Leadership. However, to address those priorities we need to determine our point of departure. Of course, we have a dream and an embodied knowledge of what culture’s place can be. But we must also ask what is the State of Culture today, if we spell it out? Can we find an intersubjective positioning and how does that relate to how others see us? We need to determine the main questions, we need to address and gain a ‘snapshot’ of the current situation to use as a metaphorical map with which to navigate the terrain in our quest to strengthen Cultural Democracy and Cultural Leadership.
We have commissioned this report mainly for ourselves as culture advocates, and for our members and our sectors, as the basis for a discussion within our ecosystem. But of course, that discussion is part and parcel of our advocacy. With the arm’s-length principle in mind, we are always in conversation with policymakers whom we are sure will also benefit from this snapshot. However, the main challenge is ours: despite the poly- and perma-crises that require us to address many urgencies during our daily missions, we must take a step back and look at the bigger picture – and then move forward together with confidence.
Culture Action Europe would like to thank Elena Polivtseva for proposing such a bold approach and for its thorough implementation. Our ongoing conversation has been a great source of insight and Elena’s critical distance, rigor and empathetic exchange with the CAE team and its members has been a joyful and rewarding experience.
The process alone has allowed us such a fundamental understanding that we envisage the State of Culture project as an ongoing, biennial exercise – and therefore as a constant monitor of sorts. There are dozens of ways in which a State of Culture report can be imagined. This time, we selected a few themes that we consider crucial in the present moment, while consciously leaving out some other important topics. Future editions may choose a similar approach of stocktaking on a broader or more narrow range of themes, or may ‘zoom in’ on specific aspects arising from the discussions to come.
Meanwhile, we want to stress the obvious: this report belongs to you, the CAE membership, our ecosystem, who made it possible and should use it and benefit from it. As CAE, we will derive a series of questions from it for us to use when addressing our role of networks’ coordination and caring for the ecosystem, as well as in our research, our projects, our events – and, overall, in our advocacy.
There are many points of convergence between the findings of the report and our advocacy strategy, and these are geared towards the momentum and political agendas of the forthcoming EU cycle and the global, post-2030 agenda. Those who follow and support our flagship campaigns – the global Culture Goal campaign and the EU-wide Cultural Deal for Europe – will realise how much this study offers ´meat on the bones’ of what can often be abstract policy calls. The State of Culture challenges us to address some pointed questions in the years to come. This will require a conversation throughout our ecosystem, with our different members´ constituencies and questions will need to be specifically tailored to their missions. Together these will form a bigger picture that we will look at in the next State of Culture report.
Let this emerging monitor be a benchmark for the Cultural Sectors in Europe, as well as for our stakeholders, policymakers and those that shape public opinion regarding the nature of culture and what it can be: the driving force at the heart of our societies, our policymaking and the big transitions towards a better future.
Coming up next: State of Culture webinars
Starting this November, we will be launching a series of webinars over the next seven months. These sessions will dive deeper into the key topics raised in the State of Culture report, providing a space for dialogue, reflection, and exchange.
These discussions will culminate in our flagship event, BEYOND 2025, which will take place from the 4th to the 7th of June next year in Turin, Italy. This immersive conference experience will be shaped around the core themes of the State of Culture, ensuring that the issues most important to our community take center stage.
We invite you to mark your agendas with these upcoming dates and we hope you will join us in this experiment!
- November 12, 4-5pm ‘Instrumentalising culture?’
- December 10, 4-5pm ‘Culture, Digital & Artificial Intelligence’
- January 14, 4-5pm ‘Autonomy and freedom of artistic expression’
- February 11, 4-5pm ‘Cultural Heritage: bridging past, present and future’
- March 11, 4-5pm ‘Cultural Democracy’
- April 15, 4-5pm ‘Culture & Sustainability’
- May 13, 4-5pn ‘Intrinsic value of culture’
- June 4-7 BEYOND 2025, Turin Italy
More about the State of Culture project.