• Abstract

  With this issue we would like to say goodbye to Transcript, with whom we have been able to publish the Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy (JCMCP) for the past 10 years (since 2015). It was a very constructive collaboration, for which we would like to express our sincere thanks.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0201

• Abstract

  Cultural organizations must address issues related to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). In this perspective, we used the critical theory On Justification Economies of Worth of Boltanski and Thévenot (1991; 2006) to understand the role of cultural organizations in relation to these EDI issues. We found during a reflective methodology exercise that the way researchers use this theoretical framework to code their interviews perpetuates oppositions and fosters group conflicts. We reevaluated the coding strategy for our data, leading us to adopt the compromises between worlds. Our contribution is to propose a novel coding strategy for EDI research when using this framework. With this strategy, researchers can foster collaboration in existing group dynamics to transcend internal oppositions and establish inclusive practices.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0202

• Abstract

  From a federal policy perspective, this essay traces the rise of the cultural policy objective of ‘cultural participation’ over the last ten years in culturally federalised Switzerland. It is not only about cultural participation in current artistic creation and in cultural institutions, but also about participation in tangible and intangible cultural heritage. In retrospect, the call for as many people as possible to participate in cultural life appears to be both a necessary and unavoidable reaction of cultural policy, creative artists, cultural institutions and cultural organisations to the tectonic shifts in society and culture. For some time now, cultural policy and cultural funding can no longer be based on an understanding of what ‘culture’ is that is shared by society as a whole. Cultural promotion must also open up not only to dialogue with other policy and funding areas, but also to joint funding measures. Negotiation processes and resistance line the path into this new cultural policy territory. The essay thus draws an interim balance of an effective cultural policy objective, records important milestones and discussion points in its establishment and, last but not least, makes a contribution to the—at least in Switzerland— neglected historiography of cultural policy.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0203

• Abstract

  The development of successful measures in the area of cultural participation requires a detailed understanding of the (non-)visitors to cultural institutions. The survey of lifestyles and social milieus is particularly suitable for this purpose. Gunnar Otte’s lifestyle typology makes it possible to conduct a cost-effective survey using a short questionnaire. However, there is still room for improvement with regard to the lifestyle descriptions and the selectivity of the typology. By choosing a different calculation method, the so-called latent class analysis, the content of the typology can be refreshed and further developed. On the basis of Otte’s questionnaire instrument, a new model was calculated using representative data for Berlin, which will be referred to as the “cultural milieu model”. Finally, nine updated milieu descriptions are presented and desiderata are discussed.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0204

• Abstract

  In publicly funded culture, the concept of participation is regularly considered from the perspective of those actors who want to bring offers to the audience. Participation understood in this way often involves little more than the reception of the art product. The essay criticizes this approach and examines the question of what an appropriate understanding of participation is in view of the virulent social challenges. It is the hope of many that cultural participation can promote value-based coexistence and thus stabilize democracy and help activate social action, and this stimulates the discussion about participation. The article discusses how participation in publicly funded cultural institutions can be designed to contribute to this.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0205

• Abstract

  This article delves into the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic in the landscape of ballet production in Japan, with a particular focus on the experiences of the Japan Performing Arts Foundation (NBS). The paper examines the challenges faced by the NBS and other cultural organizations, shedding light on their efforts to adapt to the crisis. It explores the response of the Japanese government, particularly the financial aid programs introduced by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and the response of artists, and argues that both government support for ballet and artist advocacy increased because of and during the COVID crisis and further describes the innovation and temporization of both.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0206

• Abstract

  This project aimed to create a foundation for decision-making regarding measures and potential adjustments to the funding structures in Vorarlberg. This involved socio-economic indicators, descriptions of the artists’ living conditions, evaluations of funding structures and reception of art by the population. The empirical study comprised seven interviews with management personnel, 15 semi-structured interviews, three focus group interviews and one standardized online survey of artists as well as a survey of the population. The results suggest that the arts and culture scene plays a crucial role in society. Adequate funding is supported by the population and demanded by artists to offer (excellent) art to the (demanding) audience. The structure of funding landscape directly and indirectly impacts art production and thus the ability of a society to reflect on itself through mutual exchange.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0207

• Abstract

  The first idea of initiating Urban Music Studies as a new field of social and cultural studies research dates to the year 2010 when Volker Kirchberg, Alenka Barber-Kersovan and Robin Kuchar, members of the Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organisation at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, organized a conference entitled Music City Hamburg (https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-1965-2/music-city/). This conference was inspired by theoretical works on creative industries and creative cities by authors such as Richard Florida and Charles Landry on one side and the controversial political dispute in Hamburg about a new and prestigious concert hall. At that time, the dispute erupted in connection with a largescale construction project in the port of Hamburg, which, among other things, included the conversion of an old warehouse into the Elbe Philharmonic Hall as the designated landmark of the city.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0208

• Abstract

  In 2021, for the first time, all the nominees for the Turner Prize were socially engaged art (SEA) collectives. The groups all ’democratised’ their practices by relinquishing their authorial control to non-artists. Framed by the prestige of the Turner Prize, this relinquishing of control, through collaborative actions with various communities, was lauded as ethically meritorious, because of its egalitarian and non-hierarchical nature. We argue that behind the growing institutional success of SEA lies a tension between its ’goodness’ as a necessity based on a model of authentic practice, and the context of ’post-truth’ that informs its rejection of ’artistic expertise’ in favour of egalitarian processes. However, we contend that it is not the processes themselves, but the monumentalising of democracy and equality that brings SEA into the domain of post-truth. We conclude that SEA must retain a dialectical tension between equality and the production of truth as a cultural value: a dialectic which involves the careful reinstatement of artistic authorship and a sincerer vision of its political ambitions and signification.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361

• Abstract

  Performing arts organizations (PAOs) need to manage their artistic ambitions in the face of public sector reforms that promote cultural entrepreneurship, the commercializing, and marketization of art. This study uses an institutional logics lens to examine the tensions PAOs experience resulting from this need and their responses to and management of the complexities in their environment. This study draws on a qualitative analysis of nine PAOs in the Netherlands and finds that the main tensions experienced by PAOs stem mainly from stakeholder plurality and the identity of the individual organization. PAOs primarily employ the coping strategies of acquiescence, avoidance, and compromise, which they prioritize over stronger forms of resistance such as defiance and manipulation, and maintain separate logics of operation rather than working towards their synthesis. This leads to a dynamic process model which identifies both a vicious and a virtuous approach to managing tensions.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

doi 10.14361/zkmm-2021-0206

• Abstract

  Digitalization offers new possibilities for cultural institutions but also challenges existing models. Looking at art institutions and their role as distributors and preservers of culture, this essay uses infrastructure theory and four case studies to discuss challenges that analog institutions face when they are dealing with digital art. The issues identified relate to resources, technical and financial, and knowledge about technological needs. The study also indicates that we hold on to old infrastructures and habits when it comes to preservation and distribution, but also when it comes to what an institution is and what it can be. Changing these habits takes time since they are often embedded in other systems. This suggests that the challenges institutions face in the cases of digital art are part of a larger infrastructural problem, which includes systems for funding, distribution of knowledge, educational programs, and habits.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

doi 10.14361/zkmm-2021-0102

• Abstract

  The focus of this essay is, first, to see if the Transylvanian city of Cluj can really be counted amongst ‘post-industrial’ cities – or, at least, if its strategies of development would really allow it to be listed as a ‘post-industrial’ city in the foreseeable future. Secondly, the essay will try to find the set of factors that determines the city’s current – as it will unfold – ambitious development and, future – no less ambitious – projects. Thirdly, the link between the post-industrial spin and the emergence of an important creative industries scene will be considered, as the essay will try to explain the role of creative industries in the new post-industrial economic dynamic of the city.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

doi 10.14361/zkmm-2020-0108

• Abstract

  Was ist Musikvermittlung? Wer sind die Musikvermittlerinnen und Musikvermittler und wie arbeiten sie heute? Und welche Diskurse und Spannungsfelder existieren rund um dieses Praxisfeld? Mit dem Handbuch Musikvermittlung legen die beiden Musikpädagogen und Musikvermittler Axel Petri-Preis und Johannes Voit einen umfangreichen Sammelband vor, der den Anspruch erhebt, die „zentrale Ressource für die universitäre Lehre“ (S. 13) in dem seit Jahren stetig wachsenden Praxisfeld der Musikvermittlung zu sein. Auch verstehen die Herausgeber die Sammlung von insgesamt 69 Einzelbeiträgen als Dokumentation des Status quo der Musikvermittlung im deutschsprachigen Raum, denn hier legt die Anthologie ihren Schwerpunkt. Die beiden Herausgeber sind seit vielen Jahren als Musikwissenschaftler als auch als Praktiker im Feld der Musikpädagogik und Musikvermittlung tätig. Petri-Preis (Universität für Musik und darstellende Künste Wien) und Voit (Universität Bielefeld) verfolgen dabei in Zusammenarbeit mit den insgesamt 57 Autorinnen und Autoren aus Wissenschaft und Praxis einen praxistheoretischen Ansatz, der musikpädagogische Wissenschaft und musikvermittelnde Berufspraxis als Einheit denkt. Die einzelnen Beiträge der Anthologie umfassen meist nicht mehr als sechs Seiten und wurden einer Begutachtung unterzogen.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0213

• Abstract

  Dass die Covid-Pandemie gravierende Auswirkungen auf Kunst und Kultur hatte, muss wohl nicht eigens betont werden. Auch das eine Rückkehr zu Vor-Covid-Zeiten nicht unbedingt zu erwarten war oder mindestens längere Zeit in Anspruch nehmen dürfte, konnte man eigentlich voraussetzen, auch wenn zumindest einige der aktuell erfolgreichen Kulturinstitutionen an diese Zeiten anknüpfen können. Das Ziel des Bandes besteht demgegenüber eher darin, empirische Erkenntnisse aus aktueller Forschung zu versammeln, die auf mögliche positive langfristige Konsequenzen und Lernprozesse aus den Erfahrungen mit der Pandemie weisen. Die Beiträge befassen sich mit Künstlern und Institutionen und diskutieren mögliche künftige Krisen in Gebiet der klassischen Musik und betrachten den durch die Pandemie ausgelösten Digitalisierungsschub.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0213

• Abstract

  Grant Kester, professor of art history at the University of California San Diego, has made a noteworthy contribution to the discussion about the relation between art and society with an impressive set of two interrelated monographs published in as many years. The second of these, Beyond the Sovereign Self, is the subject of this review but the first instalment, The Sovereign Self: Aesthetic Autonomy from the Enlightenment to the Avant-garde (2023), which the author sees as an independent work, will not be left entirely unattended to. As clearly indicated by the titles (and subtitles) of the books, their pivotal point is the notion of sovereignty, primarily with regard to its application to beings possessing a self — for Kester, this means humans — but also in relation to the phenomenon referred to as art. In essence, Kester’s thesis comes down to a claim about the notion of sovereignty descended from the (primarily German) Enlightenment, having impinged rather too heavily upon artistic practice, not least in the twentieth century through conceptions of art manifested in avantgarde movements. Kester’s claim, in other words, is that the avantgarde in particular, and even modernist art in general, over-emphasizes the notion of the autonomous artist. Such an over-emphasis, for Kester, recycles romantic notions of genius, intuition and transcendence in a contemporary context where an individualistic paradigm of this mold cannot but fall prey to capitalist appropriation with its all-consuming commodification of (the products of) any type of freedom-seeking activity (KESTER 2023). A prime example is, of course, artistic creation. Thereby, art’s socio-critical edge is blunted or even obliterated.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0215

• Abstract

  Authored by five specialists with balanced expertise in arts and culture, Inside Hong Kong’s Arts and Cultural Scene is an insightful guide to the city’s thriving sector. In its twenty-eight chapters, Lo and his co-authors Okpoti, Hsu, Anghelescu, and Chiu reflect about the city’s unique blend of global cultures seen through an arts management lens. In the conversations with leading industry professionals, Lo et al. trace the socio-economic impacts of arts festivals and fairs in Hong Kong, examine the city’s position as the Asian centre for arts and culture, and investigate the direction the industry is heading. The inside knowledge, abundant experiences, and varied perspectives documented cover key areas in the fields of arts management and cultural policy research including arts infrastructure, funding, leadership, censorship, entrepreneurship, and technology.

Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 2024

10.14361/zkmm-2024-0216