Cultural equality and policy in Taiwan: the case studies on children/adolescents and the people with disabilities

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the development and challenges of ‘cultural equality’ and cultural policy in Taiwan. On 10 May 2019 Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed the ‘Cultural Fundamental Act’ provides comprehensive system design and policy tools for cultural equality. We use the two-preceding cultural-disadvantage cases roughly show that it is difficult to implement cultural equality in Taiwan on three levels: (1) Inability to tolerate differences due to social discrimination, which prevents children of special ethnic groups or people with disabilities to develop their subject identity. (2) Current obstacles and difficulties in cultural participation, such as lack of time, inconvenient transportation, lack of information sources, unfriendly space design, etc. (3) Support and construction of an inclusive culture: Empower children and people with disabilities to hone their artistic and cultural skills, encourage their creation, and inspire more works to be produced. Finally, this paper proposes some suggestions for cultural policy in Taiwan.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural policy
• cultural equality
• child rights
• disable arts
• inclusive culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Chi-Jung Chu ‘Cultural Policies and Museum Development: A Case Study of Taiwan’ explored the cultural policy stages of Taiwan, and categorized the generally accepted stages as follows: nationalism and the Chinese cultural revival movement stage (1965–1970s), modernism stage (1980s), decentralization stage (1990s), cultural and creative industry stage (2000s), and the ‘cultural citizenship’ stage (2005) proposed under the concept of cultural citizenship in 2005.

2. In 2006, the United Nations promulgated the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This convention focuses on human rights and emphasizes anti-discrimination, equality, and social participation in order to fully protect the dignity and rights of the physically and mentally handicapped. In terms of political and public life participation, Article 29 of the CRPD advocates the participation of people with disabilities in general cultural life, recreation, and sports activities; and protects their rights to participate in public affairs and political activities.

3. The author of this paper has served as a member of the first to third (2017–2022) Cultural Equality Committee for the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan and was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture to plan the cultural equality policies in Taiwan (divided into short, medium, and long-term). In 2018, the Cultural Equality Conference decided to conduct planning research on children, the elderly, the physically and mentally disabled, and the language minorities first. Among them, children and the physically and mentally disabled are regarded as the most urgent groups. The reasons include: These two groups are both physically and mentally disadvantaged, their ability to act autonomously is relatively impaired, they have a weaker subjectivity and apprehension regarding rights, it is more difficult for them to advocate self-rights or organize to do so, and they must rely on their legal agents or guardians.

4. The main interview topic: Clarify the connotations of cultural rights for children and disability groups in Taiwan’s cultural policy. What rights should be included? How should the policy be promoted? How should the promotion structure be established? Organization? Cooperation with inter-ministerial committees? Inventory the cultural equality promotion status for children as well as the physically and mentally disabled, review the various key subsidies, and make optimization proposals

5. https://www.americansforthearts.org/about-americans-for-the-arts/our-statement-on-cultural-equity (viewed on 19 December 2019)

6. Research on cultural equality started to gain traction in Taiwan after 2016. Most of them focused on the dilemmas for disadvantaged groups to participate in museums, which make it difficult to implement cultural equality. Such research mostly focused on how the disadvantaged groups deal with space, economic capital, cultural capital, action, physical inconvenience, and other related topics. Yi (2016) pointed out that according to her own experience as a handicapped person, these problems are often caused by the lack of fundamental discourse on social justice perspectives. People seldom realize the power relationship between museums and the disabled, and often replicate the top-down service model by reinforcing the ‘savior’ moral ethics of museums, which can instead become unexploded time bombs for people with disabilities (Yi 2016, 36). Recently, there have been evaluations and reflections on the cultural equality projects proposed by various museums. Examples: ‘Mobile Museum’ proposed by New Taipei City, which involves using digital data and diversified display technologies to penetrate communities and enable remote villagers, the elderly, children, people with disabilities, aboriginal tribes, etc. to access museums (Lin & Lee 2018, 5–6); studies related to non-barrier services provided by the museum community (especially the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts), such as the development and influence of the ‘Non-Visual Exploration Activities’ (Wu 2016); the ‘NTMOFA-Accessibility APP’ of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts that offers verbal images for the visually impaired; and the effectiveness of sign language guide service for the hearing impaired (Chao 2018). The ‘New Immigrant Ambassadors’ project of the National Taiwan Museum has provided training for new immigrants from Vietnam and Indonesia to become guides. In addition to multilingual services, they also give immigrant communities richer and more diversify perspectives on the objects exhibited (Yang 2017). Other studies emphasize on the research and investigation of culturally disadvantaged users and their exhibition viewing experience. For example, Cheng (2009) explored the possibility of implementing gender equality education in art museums by focusing on four gender themed exhibitions between 2003 and 2005, and interviewed visitors to discover different interpretations based on different genders and life experience. Therefore, we should further examine the marginal, mixed, excluded, and heterogeneous multi-identities in the future while exposing the position and social context of the disadvantaged.

7. What is ‘Disability’? Who are ‘Persons with Disabilities’?/ Covenants Watch https://npost.tw/archives/36620

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Li-Jung Wang

Dr. Li-Jung Wang is professor in Department of Hakka Language and Social Sciences, Director of General Education in National Central University, Taiwan. Dr. Wang’s academic expertise is relative to cultural policy, cultural citizenship, multiculturalism, transnational community.