François Matarasso

In the latest episode of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and Owen Kelly talk about State of Culture, a new report from Creative Action Europe. It’s a substantial and thought-provoking document that aims – once again – to argue for the importance of culture in democratic life. But it’s also problematic for several reasons, including its assumption that culture is good and its careless use of the terms culture and art. As a result, like most cultural policy documents I’ve read over the decades, it ends up defending the interests of a narrow, professional (and mostly unprofitable) arts sector while believing it is making the case for culture’s universal value. 

Culture can be understood as humanity’s infinitely rich and diverse systems of meaning-making made visible in language, dress, social customs, religion, food and, of course, art in all its myriad forms. Culture in this sense cannot be good, unless you believe that all meanings, all beliefs, all values are good.

The belief that women are inferior to men and therefore should have fewer rights and opportunities is held by many people and enforced in many countries. It is cultural and – in my view – wrong. Culture, in this understanding, can be seen like science: it is a power that human beings have developed. That power is in itself desirable, literally empowering, but not everything it produces is desirable or empowering. Culture can be oppressive and dangerous. Unless we understand that, we make fundamental errors in all our thinking about it. 

The same is true of art, a particularly powerful dimension of culture. If you doubt that art can be used ideologically and for oppressive purposes spend a few hours looking at the paintings in a European museum and ask yourself what the representation of women says about society, in the past and today. 

But Creative Action Europe does not see that moral, political and cultural ambiguity. Among the eight ‘Key Messages’ in the State of Culture report, I read that: 

The valuing of democracy and culture shares common principles, and each can mutually reinforce the other.

But there is nothing intrinsically democratic about culture, which has mostly thrived and been valued in non-democratic societies. In European history, the great patrons of art have been the church and royalty.

Because it confuses culture and art, seeming to use the terms interchangeably, the report makes confusing statements such as, in its first Key Message:

The value of culture lies in its autonomy. Valuing culture solely through external needs and goals can only be a survival tactic, not a sustainable strategy.

This is an argument for not instrumentalising art in public policy, which is defensible (although I also think it’s misguided and self-serving), But it is not a meaningful statement about culture, which is always and inescapably autonomous. Nobody has ever been able to control how human beings make or use culture. 

It is in another of the report’s Key Messages that its true intentions become clear:

Culture begins with the people who create it. Specific protections for creative workers are needed, not only to ensure their rights are on a par with other workers but also to highlight the unique value their work brings to society.

Like so many cultural policy documents before, the State of Culture report uses a large concept of culture and its importance in social values (such as democracy) to argue for class interests.

Of course, economic groups are entitled to defend their interests: that’s why unions are essential participants in democracy. The problems start when sectional interests are disguised as societal interests. It’s an error to which the arts world is especially prone because, since the invention of so-called Fine Art during the European Enlightenment (see A Restless Art, Chapter 8) the dominant Western idea of art holds that it expresses universal, transcendent values and that those who create it are disinterested geniuses. That belief has been very powerful in energising art during the past two centuries – and also in securing money and power for the institutions and individuals who control the art world. 

In a democratic society, I see no reason to treat any group as intrinsically more valuable than any other. It is reasonable to reward the work people do according to how much society values it, and we do, though it doesn’t say much  about our current values that we reward currency speculators better than doctors. But even in that disagreeable logic, people are rewarded only for what they do, not for who they are. Most cultural policy reports are written by people who work in the arts and cultural sectors and so it is not surprising that most of them ultimately conclude their sector needs better treatment (especially more public funding) because it is intrinsically special. 

But it isn’t – or at least no one has ever convinced me that an artist should earn a better living than a supermarket worker merely because of their choice of work. I’m all for reducing poverty and exploitative wages but – as Arlene says in her blog post about the report – that’s because poverty and exploitation is bad for people and for society as a whole. 

We urgently need a new social contract that includes a much more equitable distribution of social and economic resources, not better public funding for artists. That would only fuel the justified sense of grievance felt by many who struggle to make ends meet while others do very nicely, thank you, showing their disdain for anyone who doesn’t share their security, privileges and values. Or their culture.

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