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A battle is raging between arts for art?s sake and the role culture can play in social inclusion. Helen Gould suggests the tide is turning.

The year 2004 was a landmark year in the long revolution of connecting arts, culture and social policy. ?The issue is not whether, but how culture matters?, wrote Professor Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate economist, in ?Culture and Public Action?, an influential new publication by the World Bank. The ?Human Development Report 2004? ? the annual report of the UN Development Programme ? took Cultural Liberty as its theme: ?People want the freedom to participate in society without having to slip off their chosen cultural moorings?. Here in the UK, the Scottish Executive instituted a Cultural Commission to undertake a review of culture in Scotland ? one of the most interesting aspects being the debate on cultural rights: not just rights to arts, but to a much broader notion of participation in cultural life, identity, heritage, faith. Think tank Demos published a report, ?Capturing Cultural Value?, on the need for new forms of complex measurement of the impact, benefit and value of culture. And Creative Exchange undertook research that found projects which support cultural identity and creative expression contribute in significant ways to the integration process for refugees and asylum seekers, and also for host communities.

Changing understanding

Often, in Britain, we still seem to be shambling about trying to defend the role of arts and culture as a valid aspect of social policy. It feels like an interminable Groundhog Day. The ?arts and social inclusion sector? repeatedly awakens to maintain a remarkable portfolio of activity and achievement across the social policy spectrum, on pitiful resources and next-to-no infrastructure, while the old ?arts-for-arts sake? brigade unceasingly complains about the instrumentalisation of arts policy. In reality, cursory analysis of Arts Council England?s (ACE) budget from 2003/06 revealed that less than two per cent of its Regularly Funded Organisations? budget appeared to be going on ?arts and social inclusion? organisations. But arguing the case for greater investment seems virtually impossible in a climate when the arts sector is already concerned about the impact of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport?s recent settlement on the mainstream. It is beginning to seem that progress cannot be made until there is a fundamental shift in our understanding of what culture is and does, and how the arts sector relates to that. The year 2004 was interesting affirmation that this is beginning to happen.

Narrow vision

Frequently, in the UK, we equate the word ?culture? with the arts. But the international perspective is very different. In 1982, UNESCO?s Mexico Declaration recognised that culture is, ?The whole complex of distinctive, spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterise a society or social group. It includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, values systems, traditions and beliefs?. Our narrower interpretation of culture is limiting our ability to envision the power of culture and the arts in social policy. ACE partially made the leap by shifting to a corporate strategy based on a transformation agenda. But the challenge is that its organisational culture is still locked in the past. Try as you might, a fundamentally centrist, corporate top-down model of delivery does not generally deliver transformation. So what does?

Cultural relevance

Creative Exchange?s recent research, funded by the UK Department for International development (DFID), gave rise to the ?Levels Model?, describing the role of culture in social policy in relation to four primary levels:

? Culture as context ? the social landscape in which social change and development occurs, and which includes values, beliefs, history, heritage
? Culture as content ? languages, practices, traditions, social hierarchies that need to be taken into account
? Culture as method ? the cultural media used in social programmes, which include radio, theatre, music, graphics, photography etc.
? Culture as expression - the dynamic, creative element of culture that allows us to communicate our own unique experience of life, and which is fundamental to identity and self-determination.

The research found that social development projects with greater cultural resonance and relevance to their audience stood a greater chance of achieving sustainable outcomes. Further, we found that there were two modes of engaging with culture ? as a tool: an instrumental process that was top-down, its outputs determined by those in control of the resourcing; or as a process: a liberationist approach that shifted power and strengthened people?s control over their development.

A whole culture

We also found that the real power of working from a cultural approach ? taking into account the arts but also cultural context, content, method and expression ? was the ability to simultaneously deliver a number of outcomes: economic, social, capacity (e.g. skills and knowledge), attitude and behavioural, communications, rights, cultural (e.g. strengthening of identity and cultural engagement), policy influencing (better connections to public services/policy) and environmental (e.g. relationship to the natural/urban environment).

Engaging with the debate about this broader notion of culture presents challenges to both the social and arts sectors. First, can any social sector activity operate without an understanding of the broader cultural landscape, and without being sensitive to the cultural experience and needs of its audience? If we accept that the answer on all counts is ?no?, then we may be entering into a period when cultural mapping and content planning become an inevitable part of the social policy process. Certainly, there is a shift internationally towards recognising that some major issues like poverty cannot be analysed and addressed effectively without considering the cultural dimension. If cultural issues are creeping up the social policy agenda, then the arts sector has an interesting window of opportunity.

Second, if the arts sector remains stuck in a top-down mode of mainstream arts delivery, isn?t there a danger that it is operating its own brand of ?instrumentality?? To become truly transformational, the arts sector needs to start asking itself for whom its products and processes have resonance and relevance? How is it connecting with the broader cultural landscape of society? How is the diversity of cultural content in Britain reflected in arts provision? If transformation is about a liberationist approach to social policy, doesn?t that apply in arts policy too?

Taking action

In the 1970s, research for UNESCO by Pierre Moulinier, former director of research at the French Ministry of Culture, concluded that there were two principle trajectories for arts and cultural policy. There was the ?democratisation of culture?, which involved taking selected cultural works and values to the widest number of people. This was largely a one-way process that excluded certain types of cultural works and action as invalid on the basis of the subjective judgements, often, of an élite. Moulinier claims that culture in this case becomes ?inextricably linked? with social hierarchy in which culture, ?like a piece of furniture or clothing... situates its owner at a point in the social or cultural scale?. The second possible trajectory for arts and cultural policy was socio-cultural action, or animation, which involved facilitating the growth of cultural democracy by promoting culture and arts activity from the grassroots. It involved re-organising the ?decision-making structure in cultural matters so that social groups and communities can, without interference, decide on cultural issues which concern them? in short, it is not the job of the State to de-centralise and disseminate a culture; its task is to encourage each social group and local community in the nation to define and achieve its own culture?.

UK arts delivery still largely operates through the first mode. The second requires a shift in the way we value the arts in terms of their benefit to different constituencies: professional, voluntary, community. And if we accept that value is in the eye of the beholder, then a more democratic system of resourcing may be required. Which is why the Demos report has arrived at such an interesting juncture. We don?t just need to tinker with the edges of cultural and arts policy, we need to revolutionise it ? and with it, the systems and thinking that deliver it.

?Arts and social inclusion? is in a perilous and uncomfortable place at the moment, but also an exciting one: on the fringes, engaging with new social partners, experimenting, challenging old modes of cultural policy. This is where the cultural policy revolution is happening. Small wonder that it?s being starved!

The report Culture: Hidden Development is published at w: http://www.creativexchange.org.uk