Call for democratic culture

New legislation to enshrine the rights of UK citizens to the arts and culture, and full disclosure of the policies and financial information of funding bodies are among the changes called for in a new paper by John Holden, published by the think-tank Demos. In ‘Democratic culture’, Holden contends that “the full and free participation of an overwhelming majority of citizens in cultural life is attainable, but steps need to be taken to make it happen, and those measures are not all within the remit of cultural organisations”, and says that democratic culture “would ideally display characteristics of universalism, pluralism, equality, transparency and freedom”. He asserts that “the legal basis of cultural democracy already exists… underpinned by the UK’s treaty obligations” in the form of Article 27 of the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights and in Article 31 of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which state the universal right to participate in cultural life and enjoy the arts. Holden calls for legal commitments to cultural learning, the arts and culture being included in public broadcasting, and local authority arts provision becoming a statutory obligation. The lack of transparency both in the funding system and among publicly funded arts organisations is heavily criticised. He demands that there should be “full public disclosure of artistic policies and financial information; clear criteria for funding decisions…; public disclosure of how board appointments are made…; compulsory annual information from local authorities about expenditure on culture; [and] research into the influence of elected, non-elected and commercial interests on arts and cultural organisations”. To promote equality of access to culture, he believes that initiatives such as Find Your Talent should strengthen arts access in schools. He also rebuts the widely held view that democratisation would mean an automatic loss of quality or excellence, arguing that “culture has been at its most vibrant and most enduring when most exposed to the demos: think of Greek drama, the Elizabethan playhouse and Italian opera”.
w: http://www.demos.co.uk