The World of Cultural Policy

Attending UNESCO's World Conference on Cultural Policies in Stockholm was like being awake in a dream. Here in the United States, when I mention to someone my lifelong interest in cultural policy, the response is usually, "What's that?" At the Stockholm conference, I found myself among hundreds -- thousands! -- of people who already know the answer.

Of course, the dream had its nightmare dimensions: too many three-and-a-half-hour sessions with no breaks, crowded rooms with poor acoustics, and translators sometimes struggling with the arcane concepts tossed around by speakers from all over the world. Since the Conference was convened first and foremost as a forum for official government delegations, there was plenty of parliamentary jockeying, focused mainly on finalizing an "Action Plan' for UNESCO and its member states.

But within this temporary village of cultural policy-makers, activists, diplomats and demonstrators were many people of extraordinary interest. They emerged mainly in the much more focused and interactive "Agora" and "Forum" sessions organized by UNESCO member countries and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) respectively, which ran parallel to the conference of official delegations. As always, the most important part of the conference was between the sessions, when newfound kindred spirits could get to know each other.

The Stockholm conference reflected key themes in cultural policy thinking today:

• A continuing emphasis on broadening the scope of cultural policy to include "the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or social group.... not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs" (a quote from the 1982 Mexico City Declaration, the last worldwide meeting of ministers like the one in Stockholm, reaffirmed in the 1998 conference's "Action Plan").
• Deepening concern about the "globalization of culture," always an important theme in UNESCO's discourse, but heightened in recent years by the conglomeration of transnational corporate commercial entities, accelerating since the 1980's.
• Interest in examining how "sustainable development" can exist alongside respect for diverse cultural traditions. This was discussed in the abstract, but there were few concrete proposals.
• Great attention and concern to the preservation and promotion of cultural diversity, the antithesis of globalization of culture, for protecting freedom in cultural life, the rights of minority cultures and points-of-view, and included marginalized voices in public affairs.
• Internationally, deep questioning of the role of the state, especially acute in formerly socialist countries, but prevalent now everywhere as nation-states cut back public expenditure and privatize more and more sectors of society once considered part of the public domain.

But there were very few Americans at the Stockholm meeting to discuss this problem. President Reagan led our country out of UNESCO in the early '80s, with several other Western powers trailing behind. Britain and the other Western nations have since reentered UNESCO, so they took part in the Conference; but the U.S. had no official part in the meeting. Consequently, I was one of very few Americans attending.

Our absence is shameful. We could learn so much from the experience of other nations. They've taken public cultural policy-making seriously for the past 50 years while we've barely recognized it as a possibility. Moreover, they have been actively in dialogue with each other about what works and what doesn't and what issues remain to be tackled. They have a great deal to teach us that could help illuminate some of our most intractable cultural issues. For example: how to grapple with the problem of non-participation -- people who apparently don't care about public life, don't vote, or succumb to anti-social impulses like racism or anti-immigrant feeling. Other countries could learn from us, too. We have much to contribute to global dialogue on questions of cultural diversity, alternative approaches to producing media in non-commercial contexts, and ways of patching together non-public financial support, to name just a few.

But before we plunge into dialogue with cultural policy-makers abroad, we in the United States need to do a little catching up. We've largely missed out on the last 30 years of cultural-policy discourse. So how can Americans do a little self-education?

You can start by reading the book which was the foundation for the conference, UNESCO's recent publication Our Creative Diversity, the report of the World Commission on Culture and Development. Published in 1995, revised in 1996, it can be ordered through the, at the UNESCO Web site.

Some of the resources at the Stockholm conference's Web site offer a great starting point for study. Of particular interest is the "Action Plan" document approved by the official delegates late on the last night of the Conference. It outlines UNESCO's current analysis of the values and issues facing cultural policy-makers, along with proposals for members states and UNESCO to take in the future.

To focus on some of the specific issues and themes on people's minds in international cultural policy discourse today, check out these two sources. First is the overall Conference "Background Document" . This document refers to eleven separate papers on various conference "sub-themes," prepared by leading specialists:

• A Commitment to Pluralism, by Bhikhu Parekh, University of Hull, United Kingdom
• Cultural Rights, by Halina Niec Adjunct Professor, Jagellonian University Krakow, Poland
• Policies for Cultural Creativity, by Nestor García Canclini Professor, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana de México, Mexico (also available in Spanish)
• Cultural Heritage, Jean Barthélemy, Professor, Polytechnic University of Mons, Belgium
• Culture for Children and Young People, Britt Isaksson, Librarian and teacher, Research Center for Children's Culture, University of Stockholm
• Improving Research and International Co-operation for Cultural Policy, by Tony Bennett and Colin Mercer Bennet: professors at Griffith University, Australia
• Mobilizing Resources for Cultural Activities, by Michihirko Watanabe, Dean, Showa University of Music, Japan
• Public Services and the Challenges of the New Media, by Lofti Maherzi, Doctor of Policies Sciences, author
• Culture and New Media Technologies, by Sally Jane Norman, Research Director, International Institute of Puppetry (Charleville-Mézières)
• Culture, Copyright and the New Media Technologies, by Jérôme Huet Professor. University of Paris II
• Women in Cultural Policies, ERICArts European Research Institute for Comparative Cultural Policy and the Arts