» NEW!» PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE
Participatory governance, as a means of sharing authority, rights and responsibilities in establishing and maintaining culture, has become a very popular concept in dis¬cussions on cultural development in the 21st century.
In cultural policy research, the analyses related to this concept have mostly focussed on various forms of participation in culture and the arts, as well as on the projects of European Capital of Culture. However, in 2016, several Scandinavian researchers gathered around the Nordic Journal of Cultural Policy, to start an especially intense discussion on participatory approaches in culture, viewed in relation to democracy.
Due to what they saw as failures of democratic process, they emphasised the importance of orientation towards an approach that could ensure more collaborative, participatory and co-creational relations in culture. Despite their differences, these authors jointly articulated the need and belief in ‘challenging the representative, identity-borne and consensus-typified democracy/community in favour of a lived, diverse and also paradoxical and agonistic or dis-sensual togetherness’ (Sørensen, 2016: 9).
Such a ‘dis-sensual togetherness’ is seen as crucial for the emergence of a new institutional culture which, rather than reflecting what already exists, could open new public spaces for activities as yet not firmly defined. Inevitable paradoxes and inherent insecurity of such future spaces are not seen as a risk but as dynamic driving forces.
Other researchers have also pointed out the importance of the shift towards participatory decision-making, albeit in somewhat less radical terms. The demand here is for decision-making procedures that would not be open only to cultural experts but would ensure the inclusion of users, i.e., those who participate in cultural programmes as an audience. Such an approach is expected to diminish the power of cultural elites and top-down decision-making and to ensure not only that the voices of users will be heard but also that they will have a visible influence over final decisions.
Despite the indisputable importance of demands of this kind, it should be said that they are by no means easy to put into practice, as shown by different examples of participatory budgeting in culture at the local level (Karels & Janssen, 2023; Rössel & Fritsch, 2023).
At the European level, an important step forward in securing citizen participation in culture was the introduction of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) among EU member states, which brought to the table the topics of access to culture, cultural participation and participatory governance in the 2010s. The structured dialogue between the European Commission and civil society led to the application of approaches that include citizens in research programmes within Horizon 2020, community projects aimed at local development supported by the European Structural Funds. The participatory approach also became a key commitment for European Capitals of Culture and for the Joint Programming Initiative on Cultural Heritage. (DV, MP)