Meeting and Creating Audience Expectations in an Age of Super-Diversity

Introduction

The EU and many of its Member States alike promote ‘Active citizenship’. The backdrop is a
widespread lack of care for democracy. The concept was put forward in search of citizens who
make use of their rights and assume responsibilities on top - citizens, who volunteer and get
involved with each other through associations, clubs or faith groups, who participate in
processes, which give shape to public services, public opinion and ideas for the future.

Cultural participation is also part of democratic behaviour – it involves sharing spaces,
experiences, and joining narratives. Artists and cultural animators can enable it. Yet the arts
remain accessible only to a minority of the population and artists seek legitimacy from core
audiences, critics and decision-makers.

Cultural institutions still target those who by education, tradition and status are already engaged. Fulfilling the ‘democratic responsibility’ of outreach and diversity seems an extra burden in times of financial pressures.

Cultural democracy requires a full polyphonic representation of social and ethnic diversity.
As our populations become ever more mobile and hybridised, public cultural institutions must
become spaces for encounter and interaction. They can be the looms where society is woven.
Cultural policy therefore cannot remain a practice of distributing funds across art forms. It
must help cultural institutions to launch significant intercultural processes, outreach and
organisational re-invention. It is a question of building capacity for change.

In line with the Platform for Intercultural Europe’s conviction that interculturalism – evolving
culture(s) through intercultural engagement – must become the norm, this event brings the
challenge of cultural participation into the spotlight. We examine the future of cultural
institutions and the challenges they face as intercultural meeting places.

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Meeting and Creating Audience Expectations in an Age of Super-Diversity