ITALIAN VERSION
The event Cultures and Identities in Europe is an online course, available from 24 February 2020. It was realized thanks to the contribution of: Anna Triandafyllidou (Full Professor at EUI), Sabrina Marchetti (Associate Professor at Venice University) and Jeremie Molho (Research Associate at EUI). The course is divided into 3 weeks, this short report summarizes the last one.
During the last week, the concept of cultural industries were presented. Cultural is generally associated to the idea of freedom. Nowadays, culture is also seen as a resource for economic investments, business and industry developments. Moreover, culture has become the essence of a new public sphere between the state and the individual, on which, over the last 250 years, contestation and legitimization of political and socioeconomic power have been based. For this reason, people like Theodor Adorno and more recently Pierre Bourdieu affirm that culture is a tool in the hands of the ruling class and the state. On the opposite side, intellectuals such as those from the Birmingham Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies argue that cultural activities developing around music, leisure, clothes, consumer objects can also become active forms of symbolic resistance.
In the 1970s, public policies and cultural industries began to intensify. In the late 1990s, the New Labour Party in the UK promoted a new notion of creative industries as a new trend in cultural policy, in order to integrate digital technologies and the new conception of knowledge economy. Today, cultural policies distinguish between different levels. For EU policies, for example, the cultural sector is divided into three concentric areas: core arts, cultural industries, creative industries. In conclusion, today, cultural industries are increasingly seen through the lenses of competition and innovation.
The following contribution concerns culture, creativity and urban space. Culture today is a key element of strategies of urban planning. From large flagship developments, the opening of an art gallery, of a concert hall or a museum, to micro activities, public space is becoming more important. Cities like Milan, Tokyo, Lisbon, Madrid are encircled and permeated with specialized industrial districts (e.g. fashion, architecture, multimedia). But why are cities so important for cultural industries? And why are cultural and creativity so crucial to new urban visions? According to Allen J. Scott the city is the, "primary location for the production of cultural commodities". Cultural industries mainly rely on freelancers and small and micro-businesses. This is one of the reasons why, also in Europe, they are closely linked to cities.
Arturo Rodriguez Morato, from the University of Barcelona, discusses the impact of culture on cities. He explained how culture becomes prominent in cities nowadays. On the one hand, there is the very common processes of urban regeneration. On the other hand, in big cities there is maximum concentration of cultural and creative industries. Cultural diversity is also a challenge, because it poses the question of social integration and how to realize it. There are many cultural policy programs that have been implemented in recent times with this same goal, especially in European cities. These programs include exhibitions showing and recognising ethnically specific cultural expressions, or program integrating ethnically market cultural elements in traditional festivities of the city.
Pier Luigi Parcu introduces his institution, the center for media pluralism, created by the European Union in order to assess the situation of media pluralism in the different member states. The center is running an instrument, called Media Pluralism Monitor, to measure the health of pluralism in the member states. First, they see how pluralism and media freedom are protected in the countries. Then, they look at market plurality, how concentrated are these markets, how transparent they are. Then, they look at social inclusiveness. The final dimension is the control of the political independence of the media, because it is essential for democracy.
The next contribution explains the main goals of the EU cultural action: to promote cooperation in the cultural field among member states, to build a European identity and to foster artistic production. The first program was “People's Europe”, which was established in 1985 to bring the people of the continent closer within the European community. Following this line of thinking, diverse projects were later developed, like the Erasmus Program. The EU promotes what is called the European Idea along with the UNESCO convention on the protection and promotion of cultural diversity. On the one hand, scholars have emphasized how these supranational cultural actions have contributed to the intellectual and artistic dissemination of European cultural diversity. On the other hand, the lack of a better coordination in the EU cultural policy and the absence of a clear legal framework have been criticized because of their negative impact on minority languages and existing diversities.
Matias Zarlenga explains how a narrative on creativity emerged in the EU’s political discourse, linking culture mainly with innovation and economic development. Over the last few decades, the great number of European cities have seen heavy investment in cultural facilities and policy to encourage the generation of cultural goods and service. The result has been the emergence of the new creativity narrative, where the creativity concept is understood within the economic framework and linked with innovation processes. He thinks that cultural creativity should be distinguished from innovation and the economistic paradigm. It could be conceived on the contrary as an open-ended process that develops in certain historical contexts and under given conditions, one which possesses no necessary or immediate goals. There are some good examples of cultural creativity with socially engaged and educational purposes, such as community basic art theatre in the Netherlands. They could be a model to create a new concept of cultural creativity beyond the hegemonic economic paradigm.
The last contribution is given by Professor Philip Schlesinger, who presents the Creative Europe program. He explains that it brings together culture and media policies in Europe, with two strands: the audio-visual dimension on the one hand, with the Media program that supports training, film projects and film festivals and the cultural dimension on the other hand, concerned with intercultural dialogue, literature, performance. He argues that the main challenge for the future of the Creative Europe program is the digital revolution and especially, the creation of a digital single market, which supposes common regulations of the media industries.
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