School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemRethinking the Governance of Local Cultural Policy from the Perspective of Sustainability( 2023-08)This thesis considers how the climate crisis and broader sustainability challenges call for a revision of approaches to cultural policy and, more specifically, what this implies for the governance of local cultural policy. Cities and local spaces are relevant settings because the frictions generated by sustainability become particularly apparent there, and because it is at the local level where conditions may exist for sustainable, culturally-adapted pathways to emerge. Addressing the governance of local cultural policy is also particularly significant because governance provides a setting for the collective negotiation of such tensions, and for the subsequent evolution of cultural policy. In order to address this topic, I have drawn on cultural policy studies, sustainable development studies, and public policy analysis, as well as my own previous practice and observations, and have conducted a case study in Barcelona, examining a set of tensions that arise in the conceptualisation and practice of governance of local cultural policy from the perspective of sustainability: namely, the ’local ownership versus diversity tension’, the ‘territorial versus multi-level tension’, the ‘citizen participation versus public responsibility tension’, and the ‘broad versus narrow scope tension’. Given that I adopt a broad understanding of governance, the case study examines formal decision-making spaces and policy documents (e.g. the Council of Culture and the local government’s cultural strategies), as well as grassroots processes that illustrate negotiations between community initiatives and public authorities, analysing how they are mutually related. Through the examination of existing knowledge on culture and sustainable development, I present six propositions in order to align cultural policy with the implications of sustainability, adaptation and regeneration. They include engaging more overtly with societal conflicts and tensions, acknowledging how culture is interdependent with other spheres of life, contributing to the broadening of cultural capabilities while fostering an ethics of responsibility towards nature, enabling a dynamic negotiation between permanence and change, and providing spaces for multiple narratives to emerge, coexist and interact. Building on these propositions, and on an analysis of the conditions that may allow governance to evolve and to inform cultural policy change through a ‘policy feedback’ process, I provide a set of directions for a new governance framework in local cultural policy. The framework addresses the values and principles that should inform governance-related policy-making (e.g., focusing particularly on the human dimension of sustainability, fostering a cosmopolitan outlook in cultural policy, and combining the strengthening of governance with measures to address inequalities in cultural life), the mechanisms that determine participation (e.g., understanding governance as a connective, open space, that explores the boundaries of the cultural realm, and combining participatory opportunities at several territorial levels), and the methods of governance (e.g., adopting ‘community of practice’ methodologies that connect thinking, learning and doing, and strengthening the mobilisation, generation and interpretation of diverse forms of knowledge).