Arts & International Affairs: 2.3: Autumn/Winter 2017 | Page 94

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
The lack of awareness of the transformative power of culture and its ability to address
economic, social, or diplomatic issues may be due to various factors:
• cultural administrations are not yet equipped or given the mandate to manage
cultural policies in a more holistic way;
• the word ‘culture’ can carry the stigma of being inefficient, marginal, secondary,
or trivial;
• the concept of innovation has been hijacked by technology industries and their
powerful lobbying, to the detriment of creation in its more traditional sense,
which is actually what innovation is based on;
• cultural stakeholders need to upgrade their lobbying skills and gain confidence
and conviction.
Of all public institutions, cities are the most aware of the importance of managing local
cultural resources to remain relevant and attractive. Culture is increasingly mainstreamed
in various policy areas such as innovation, economic development, social cohesion, ur-
ban planning as well as cities’ external relations strategies. The Culture for Cities and Re-
gions 1 project, on which the authors met, sought to overcome specific local challenges
through targeted peer-learning and study visits between cities to share knowledge and
encourage this mainstreaming of culture.
Cultural investment and cultural workers influence the attractiveness of cities, the spir-
it and morale of people, and are the focus of cultural policies. Such initiatives are often
piloted by development or economic agencies as part of innovation programs, often in
the social field or as part of urban regeneration. They are also the result of individual or
collective initiatives emerging from collaborative ecosystems, which are often enabled by
city-level matchmaking, for example between businesses, cultural organizations, or uni-
versities. It can also be the direct result of public support for the arts or because of a con-
centration of active creative personalities and entrepreneurs in one city or area of a city.
As a result, cities are triggering a cultural policy revolution. This trend is due to the in-
creased evidence of the impact of cultural investment on urban regeneration. The new
cultural policies are aimed at augmenting or leading local development, and they focus
on:
• developing long-term cultural visions and programming at local level;
• occupying former industrial sites with new economic or social activities;
1
Culture for Cities and Regions. (2015) The legacy of Culture for Cities and Regions. www.
cultureforcitiesandregions.eu (Accessed 21 November 2017). This three-year project led by EUROCI-
TIES in collaboration with KEA, produced a catalogue of 70 case studies, organized 15 thematic study
visits and provided expert coaching for 10 cities/regions. Funded under the EU’s creative Europe pro-
gramme, it aimed to take stock of existing practices all over Europe to exchange and promote transfer
of knowledge, to better understand successful cases of cultural investment, and to go into the details of
policy planning and implementation.
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