European inventory of
societal values of culture

Lähdesmäki, Mäkinen, Čeginskas, & Kaasik-Krogerus - EU Cultural Policy

Lähdesmäki, T., Mäkinen, K., Čeginskas, V. L. A., & Kaasik-Krogerus, S. (2021). EU Cultural Policy: Europe from Above. In Europe from Below, (45-72). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.

This chapter starts with an overview of the development of EU cultural policy and its main initiatives. In particular, the authors introduce the Creative Europe programme, together with its predecessors Culture and Culture 2000, which have been the EU’s core culture programmes and form the umbrella for the three cases in our book – the European Capital of Culture (ECOC), European Citizen Campus (ECC), and European Heritage Label (EHL). Then they discuss how the EU’s politics of belonging has developed in the context of cultural policy around two key ideas – European identity and participation. First, they consider how EU cultural policy connects to the concept of identity and the strengthening of its European dimension since its inception. After this, they discuss the participatory approach of EU cultural policy as well as its links to citizenship of the Union. These two sections start with a more general outline on the identity-building agenda and participatory agenda, respectively, followed by a review specifying the role of the EU projects as well as the ECOC and the EHL actions in these agendas.