Stimulating the appetite to explore cultural rights: Annamari Laaksonen talks about the study “Making Culture Accessible”
Author: Lidia Varbanova – Date: 26 Aug 2010, 16:09
«We maybe work daily on cultural rights without even realising it», says Annamari Laaksonen who inspires us to connect policy documents with cultural practice:
The study “Making Culture Accessible”, published by the Council of Europe provides a general overview of existing legal and policy frameworks in Europe, covering access to and participation in cultural life, cultural provision and cultural rights. It examines what countries in Europe have done, intend to do and could do in the future. The purpose of the study is “not to provide all the answers or information but to whet the appetite to explore more access, participation and cultural provisions in Europe”. The study finishes with the statement that “Access and participation in culture are fundamental elements in a democracy and effective policy making, but above all they help in achieving a dignified and rich life”.
The author of the study – Annamari Laaksonen has been working as a Researcher and Programme Officer at the Interarts Foundation since 2000. Her work at the foundation consists of applied research and project coordination in the field of cultural policies, development and cultural rights. She was the Coordinator of the International Congress on Cultural Rights and Human Development in 2004. Prior to Interarts, Annamari conducted PhD studies in international law and worked at the Carter Center in Atlanta, supported by a Fulbright Scholarship and the Finnish
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
1. You say in the study that “Without the right to participate in cultural life, individuals fail to develop the social and cultural connections that are important to maintaining satisfactory conditions of equality”. You refer to a set of declarations, documents and instruments regulating cultural life. But many cultural managers and artists, as well as “ordinary” audiences are not aware of the importance of this issue, and do not even understand what does it mean. Where could they learn more, where are the main ‘information points” on this matter?
What a good question to begin with! This is something that we find constantly; cultural managers, artists and activists (as well as ordinary audiences as you call them) sometimes fail to understand the importance of strong legislative bases. This is probably due to the fact that legal instruments are quite difficult to translate into concrete action and that the language used in them remains distant. And in my opinion they have all the right to think that way. International instruments cannot really be transformed directly to programmes or actions but their importance lays in the fact that they establish a normative basis, a legal obligation that sets up some standards for the protection of different rights. This then means that the right to participate in cultural life does not then depend on (sometimes changeable) political will but there is a legal structure with obligations (to protect, promote and fulfill the rights).
What are the main information points then? Well, there is a lot space for improvement. I had a hard time trying to access national legal information (many times in a local language or not accessible at all) so countries really need to find ways to make legal instruments visible to their citizen. As for the international instruments, UNESCO for example keeps a good database on international instruments. You can also find all the UN documents online, as well as the Council of Europe documents , related to human rights and legal affairs.
2. Local cultural policies are becoming more and more important as cities are the places where the everyday life and cultural processes take place. In the study you emphasise that “Cultural policies at the local level need to have strong ethical dimensions”. We rarely talk about the ethics in policy-making. Could you elaborate on this concept and give examples?
Well, local level is where the real action takes place, and it makes a difference how things are run! As it seems nowadays, people have less trust on politicians and policy-making, and there is a visible passivity towards politics in general, and it even appears to be that politicians are even expected to make use of rough tactics and questionable ethics. Why would cultural policies be any different? Recently here in Barcelona there was a big corruption-scandal regarding the administration of one of the most enigmatic cultural institutions – and we are talking about the misuse of millions of Euros of public money. After the initial shock other corruptions scandals seem to have less impact and people take them “as granted” or without visible expressions of astonishment or disapproval. The misuse of public money for private benefit is one of the most visible examples of lack ethics in public policy making but there are also others. All public policies should be based on the principles of transparency, accountability and human rights values. And at the local level this is even more important for the proximity and instant impact of the action.
3. The concept of “cultural citizenship” is widely used, but on my opinion not well understood, especially from a more practical perspective. Could you explain in simple words what does it mean?
What a challenge! Anyway, I will try. Citizenship in political terms means that a person is a citizen of a particular social, political, or national community and that his/her citizenship holds within both rights and responsibilities. There is also a theory of “active citizenship” which means that citizens should contribute to the construction of the ‘harmonious’ collective space since this is what really constitutes a society (where everyone does their share and are heard and respected). Cultural citizenship means combining cultural identity/cultural belonging with an active citizenship, where culture plays a central role. Cultural citizenship is a much more dynamic concept than nationality as it is related to the true recognition of different rights, the value/richness of differences (including cultural one) and communality.
To my understanding cultural citizenship allows also those that do not have a formal political recognition (nationality, voting rights etc.) to become an active part of society. It is a concept, a process, and most importantly – a learning process that recognises that we all have the same rights but allows also the interpretation that those rights and responsibilities can have a different nature regarding different groups.
4. In cultural policy and management field, we always face problems with “measurement” and “indicators”, because of the uniqueness and the nature of cultural processes and products, and the impossibility in many cases to imply direct indicators, both quantitative and qualitative. In the study, you propose a comprehensive table of indicators for evaluation of a cultural rights approach to policy. Could you mention the key one?
Probably most of us that work in this field know quite well this obsession with measuring things that might turn out to be immeasurable. In this very result-oriented world of ours (and less process-oriented) short-term impact seems to have more importance than long-term thinking. Even if I am a bit hesitant when it comes to indicators and their possible universality, I admit that it is useful (especially for policy-purposes) to develop instruments for measurement. In the table that I have included, I have made use of a practical model of indicators used in the human rights field – to group the indicators into structural, process and outcome indicators. Needless to say that those structural and process indicators are much easier to measure as the information is mostly quantitative. I think the key issue in this is to know the existence and application of instruments and programmes. If structural and process indicators are combined, it gives a good picture about what countries have done (and also what is the nature/orientation of their policy-making ): if they have ratified or developed legal instruments (structural) and whether this has been translated into action and programmes (processes). When it comes to measuring the impact of actions and policies (outcome indicators), the measurement is much more difficult and less reliable as the information is more qualitative, and the data that you might have is based on interviews, opinion surveys etc. In this table I have tried to introduce as much quantitative data as possible but it remains still tricky. So what I have tried to do is to basically change the level; to see in which kind of quantified elements the policies have been translated into. For example if a country has national legislation related to the access to culture of specific groups (structural), if the country has adapted policy principles and programmes on this issue (process) and this has resulted in a larger cultural offer for different groups (number and nature of existing possibilities and whether the needs and necessities of these groups have been reviewed (outcome). As you can see this model is not flawless and opens the possibility for different interpretations but it can offer some options.
5. I agree with your statement that: “Cultural legislation in many European countries clearly needs to be modernised” and “Making people part of legislative processes is important as it makes them more transparent”. How each one of us, as a citizen, can participate in the policy –making and “monitor” the process of implementing cultural rights in policy-documents and artistic practices? Could you give an example?
Even thought they are not very numbered, there have been some public consultations in which people have been invited to comment on draft laws and acts for example in 2006 there was a public consultation on the Draft Culture Bill in Scotland (that concentrated on cultural rights and entitlements). Some of the local charters have similar kind of processes – the Charter on Cultural Rights and Responsibilities in Barcelona in 2002 was drafted after a participatory consultation process with different citizen groups. Normative processes should include a mapping exercise on the needs and opinions of people as voting in elections is proving to be insufficient, or other kind of channels for participation (the options are many: online formulas, public consultations, inviting citizen groups etc.).
6. There are a lot of programs across Europe for training and education in cultural policy and management. Is “cultural rights” part of the curricula? Is it taken on board as a subject matter when we design programs for training cultural managers and administrators?
It is difficult to say as the programmes are diverse and different from each other. I would say that many of the programmes do include themes related to the legal provisions in the cultural field but not precisely cultural rights, or human rights in general or at least from a large spectrum. For example I think it is quite common to include materials on intellectual property rights and specific legislation (for example related to libraries). When I give lectures on cultural rights, I find that students find “the legal stuff” quite boring (who wouldn’t!) and not related to their own subject matter. But when you show them examples and invite them to reflect on issues related to access, participation, protection of heritage, linguistic rights, minority populations, cultural equipments and services, protection of art and culture professionals, cultural protectionism etc. , they become interested and start interacting lively. The basic problem is that the normative and regulatory field and the practice in the cultural sector are still considered quite distant and disconnected fields from each other.
I remember that some years ago when we were carrying out a study on the understanding people (culture professionals and ‘ordinary’ public) have on cultural rights; one senior culture administrator in a little town in Northern Europe told me that he had not known that he had been working with cultural rights for twenty years as he had been fostering the access of everyone to cultural services despite of tight budgets, and trying to balance the offer with the expectations of the public!
Another interesting (and missing aspect) is the connection of cultural themes with other social and vulnerable issues in our society. I have been working a lot lately on cultural rights and sexual and reproductive health/ AIDS prevention, and culture + domestic violence that have really strong cultural (and possible cultural management) connections. Needless to say that especially women on the training courses have found all this very fascinating!
7. On LabforCulture we moderate an online forum for young cultural policy researchers. What kind of advice would you give to the young researchers?
Young people are so well-prepared nowadays that probably they could give advice to me! In the office we have some 9-12 interns every year from around Europe (and actually from around the globe) and I am very happily surprised how committed and well-prepared these young people are. An advice that I would give is not actually mine but someone told it to me last week. This person works for a big European company and said that when he selects interns he puts a lot of attention on their language skills and creative hobbies. Education is very important, he said but what makes you distinctive and special is the creative capital and imagination you have. So, be brave and adventurous, stay out of common tracks, do your homework, eat your vitamins and be creative when selecting research themes and methods.
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