Making culture in a landscape of cultural policy

As the name of my own company, Thinking Practice, would suggest I think you can connect doing and making things with thinking about things, whether at a plan, policy or theoretical level. In fact I think that doing both can make each area richer, more productive and occasionally even more enjoyable. 

I was, therefore, interested to read Robert Palmer’s reflection of 5 challenges to the landscape of cultural policies in Europe. These are, in summary:

·         Rising nationalism and approaches to ‘management’ of migration and its cultural effects

·         Cuts to public expenditure as a result of the debt crisis

·         New cultural values and processes as a result of new technologies

·         The mainstreaming of culture into public policy – beyond instrumentalisation

·         New models of governance as the state recedes in its direct control

When Palmer talks about the ‘growing involvement of non-state actors’, I think he’s referring to the kind of change re.volution thinks is necessary across the arts and cultural ecology, with people who are not directly answerable to politicians (my understanding of ‘non-state actors, though I’m sure it’s more complicated than that) coming together, sometimes alongside those who are directly democratically accountable, to create networked ways of governing and developing the sector or ecology.

These 5 challenges cut towards both policy-makers (if people still make policy, rather than plans or frameworks...) and people making cultural work more directly. What are our new responsibilities in this new landscape, given the burden many describe of simply keeping their cultural practice afloat, and the parallel political burden felt by the ‘development agencies’?