Research Article
Participation in Cultural Policies: Ideological Roots and Institutional Use
Abstract
Participation is a widely discussed subject matter in cultural policy. Over the years, scholars and practitioners have approached it in a variety of ways as policy paradigms have evolved; today these paradigms demonstrate a complex understanding of culture and what participation in art and culture means. Requirements from public administration have sought to promote cultural offers with increasingly higher levels of participation, though with a varied set of interests behind them. By attending to several of these paradigms—excellence, cultural democratisation, cultural democracy, and creative industry—with a perspective that is unique to socially engaged art, this article highlights the tensions that arise in the question of means for cultural production, and further problematises the institutional use of the combined notions of art and participation.
Keywords
2023 (1)
Socially Engaged Art in a New World Order

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© 2025, Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy
Keywords
- Aesthetics
- Higher Education
- Cultural Diplomacy and Foreign Cultural Policy
- Occupation
- Career and Professional Role
- Audience Development
- Audience Studies and Visitor Studies
- Visitor Motivations
- Business
- Covid Pandemic
- Democracy
- Digitalization
- Diversity
- Third Sector
- Empirical Aesthetics
- Development
- Ethics
- Evaluation
- Field Theory
- Festival
- Film
- Federalism
- Community Arts
- Societal Change
- Ideology
- Staging
- Career
- Communication
- Concert
- Creative Industries
- Creativity
- Crisis
- Culture
- arts organizations, cultural organizations
- Cultural Participation
- Cultural Change
- Fincancing The Arts
- Cultural Promotion Law
- Cultural History
- Cultural Management
- Cultural Economy
- Cultural Organizations
- Art Education
- Cultural Policy
- Cultural Production
- Cultural Sociology
- Art Education
- Cultural Understanding
- Arts Administration
- Cultural Industry
- Cultural Sciences
- Art
- Art Field
- Arts Research
- Artists
- Artistic Research
- Artistic Reputation
- Arts Management
- Arts Organizations
- Art education
- Arts Marketing
- Arts Administration
- Curating
- Leadership
- Literature
- Advocacy
- Management
- Marketing
- Market
- Media
- Methods Development
- Mexico
- Monumentalizing
- Museum
- Music
- Non-Visitor Studies
- Opera
- Orchestra
- Organization
- Political Expression
- Post-truth Politics
- Professional Role
- Audience
- Audience Development
- Law
- Government
- Role
- Socially Engaged Art
- Social Cohesion
- Social Change
- Social Cohesion
- Non-visitor Socio-demographics
- Socioculture
- State
- Symbolic capital
- Dance
- Participatory Justice
- Theatre
- Theatre Governance
- Theory Development
- Tourism
- Transformation
- Survey
- Entrepreneurship
- Urbanism
- Civil Society