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ABSTRACT
To what extent did the Covid-19 pandemic affect the tools, priorities and organisation of cultural policies? And did the pandemic enhance the digital aspect of these policies? This paper compares pandemic cultural policy measures in seven European countries to answer these questions. The countries all installed a plurality of mitigating measures, combining grants and subsidies, compensation of lost income, income support and financial flexibility, creating a tendency towards cultural policy turning into economic policy, fiscal policy, and labour market policy. Cultural policies have not been fundamentally challenged by the pandemic, in the sense that it has affected the essential political tools, divisions of labour, or core goals. The responses have confirmed an existing policy structure or enhanced existing developments. The importance of a state-centred or a federalist cultural policy system has not been challenged in a substantial way. Secondly there is little evidence to show a general acceleration of national digital cultural policies.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. In this context, the authors stress for instance that ‘it can be expected that in terms of cultural policy countries will react in ways that align with their priorities, differing between cultural and instrumental motives. As such, differences in cultural policy aims and justifications can be expected at country level (and overtime), whereby the national preferences in cultural policy (and funding) aims can be considered to reflect the broader preferences of nation-states’ (Betzler et al. Citation2020, 2–3).
2. Rapids and backwaters. Adapting fast and slow to a digital cultural turn. Financed by Research Council Norway.
3. With Norway and Switzerland being non-members, Croatia being a rather recent member (since 2013), Germany an original member state, Spain being a member since 1986 and Sweden being a member since 1995, while the UK being now a former member.
4. See https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Government_expenditure_on_recreation,_culture_and_religion [Accessed 20.05.2021].
5. See the Annex for an overview of consulted webpages and selected documents.
6. See for a summary of this mapping.
7. Regional Authority Index is a comprehensive dataset and a methodology that measures the authority and autonomy of government levels (cf. Hooghe, Marks, and Schakel Citation2010; Schakel Citation2018).
8. See Compendium of cultural policies. The percentages are not from one and the same year but from data between 2013 and 2017 (cf. https://www.culturalpolicies.net/statistics-comparisons/statistics/funding/#1563453131381-77d52055-b082).
9. The percentages for division of cultural spending for the UK is calculated from the information in the national report from the UK in the Compendium of cultural policies. There are no numbers on regional expenditure in this overview. (cf. https://www.culturalpolicies.net/database/search-by-country/country-profile/category/?id=42&g1=7).
10. ‘Devolved matters are those areas of government where decision-making has been delegated by Parliament to the devolved institutions such as the Scottish Parliament, the Assemblies of Wales, Northern Ireland and London or to Local Authorities’. https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/devolved-and-reserved-matters/ [Accessed 18.01.21].
11. Both acronyms (Cultural and Creative Industries/Cultural and Creative Sectors) are used in relevant reports.
12. For a detailed overview of different measures, see webpages included in the Annex.
14. See https://www.culturaydeporte.gob.es/actualidad/2020/05/200527-prestaciones-artistas-boe.html [Accessed 20.09.22].
15. See https://ec.europa.eu/competition-policy/state-aid/coronavirus/temporary-framework_en [Accessed 11.02.22]. The importance of state aid control is at the same time emphasized in the temporary framework: ‘Likewise, EU State aid control ensures that the EU Internal Market is not fragmented and that the level playing field stays intact. The integrity of the Internal Market will also lead to a faster recovery. It also avoids harmful subsidy races, where Member States with deeper pockets can outspend neighbours to the detriment of cohesion within the Union’.
16. The UK needed to comply with the framework during the transition period until December 31st, 2020.
17. Consociationalism is a political system whereby major internal divisions of a state are kept in check through stabilizing efforts by different elites. Cf. (Sager and Mavrot Citation2020).
19. Cf. https://www.parlament.ch/de/services/news/Seiten/2021/20210916142551538194158159038_bsd136.aspx [Accessed 25.10.22].
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Ole Marius Hylland
Ole Marius Hylland works as a research professor at Telemark Research Institute, with research on cultural policy and cultural history. Hylland has concentrated on the field of performing arts and museums, and he has also written about cultural policy for children and young people, and the history of cultural policy. He is a cultural historian with a PhD. from the University of Oslo, with a master’s degree in folkloristics and a doctorate in cultural history. He currently works with various projects related to the digitalisation of the cultural sector and cultural policy, and he leads the project ‘Rapids and backwaters. Adapting fast and slow to a digital cultural turn’, financed by Research Council Norway. Hylland has written a number of articles, reports and books on cultural policy and cultural history topics. In 2017, he published the introductory book Kulturpolitikk. Organisering, legitimering og praksis [Cultural Policy. Organization, Legitimation and Practice] together with Per Mangset, and, in 2018, he published the anthology Aesthetics and Politics (Palgrave) together with Erling Bjurström.
Mira Burri
Mira Burri is Professor of International Economic and Internet Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lucerne. Her research interests are in the areas of global trade, culture and copyright law and policy, in particular when confronted with digital technologies. Burri is presently the principal investigator of the research project “Trade Law 4.0: Trade Law for the Data-Driven Economy” sponsored by the European Research Council. Her recent publications include Public Service Broadcasting 3.0 (Routledge 2015) and Big Data and Global Trade Law (Cambridge University Press 2021).
Katarina Lindblad Gidlund
Katarina L Gidlund is a professor of informatics and research leader for the Forum for Digitization (FODI) at Mid Sweden University, working with critical studies of digitisation and societal change. She holds various positions both nationally and internationally, e.g. as member of scientific councils of The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the Swedish Agency for Accessible Media (MTM), and in the World Bank’s newly launched expert group, The Global Influencer Panel.
Christian Handke
Christian Handke is Associate Professor of Cultural Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam. From 2012 to 2018, he was programme director of the Master in Cultural Economics and Entrepreneurship, and, since 2017, he has served in the Faculty Council of the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication. Dr. Handke’s research focuses on cultural economics and the economics of copyright, innovation and technological change, cultural/creative and media industries, as well as on text and data mining and systematic literature reviews. His work has been published in leading specialised journals, such as the Journal of Cultural Economics and Information Economics & Policy. Among other things, Dr. Handke is currently associate editor of the Journal of Cultural Economics and president of the Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues. He has also consulted for a variety of public and private organisations, including the European Commission, the National Academies of the Sciences (USA), Industry Canada, the UK Intellectual Property Office, the federal German Expert Commission on Research and Innovation (EFI), the federal German Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, and the Spanish Fundacion Autor.
Arturo Rodríguez Morató
Arturo Rodríguez Morató is Professor of Sociology and director of CECUPS at the University of Barcelona. Currently he is Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs, Harvard University. His specialty is the sociology of culture and the arts. Prof. Rodríguez Morató has carried out numerous researches and published extensively on artistic professions and markets, culture and territory, cultural policy, heritage and cultural identities. At present, he is coordinating the European project ‘UNCHARTED: Understanding, Capturing and Fostering the Societal Value of Culture’ (2020-24). He is also co-editing a special issue of the journal Cultural Trends on shaping the value of culture in Europe and a book on Sociology of the Arts in Action – New Perspectives on Creation, Production, and Reception (Palgrave, forthcoming).
Kate Oakley
Kate Oakley is professor of Cultural Policy at University of Glasgow. Oakley’s research, which is the broad area of cultural industries and the cultural economy, falls into three categories: policy, place and labour. Oakley has published widely in cultural policy including three books: Cultural Policy, with David Bell in the Routledge Key Ideas in Media and Cultural Studies Series and Culture, Economy & Politics: the case of New Labour, co-authored with David Hesmondhalgh, David Lee and Melissa Nisbett. In 2020, she co-edited Cultural Industries and the Environmental Crisis: New Approaches for Policy together with Mark Banks.
Jaka Primorac
Jaka Primorac works as a Senior Research Associate at the Department for Culture and Communication, Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO), Zagreb, Croatia. She holds a PhD (2010) in Sociology from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia. Her research interests intersect the fields of sociology of culture, sociology of media and communications and sociology of work. Primorac collaborated on a number of research projects in Croatia and abroad (e.g. Jean Monnet project CULPOL, ‘Access to culture. Policy analysis’, EU Program Culture, COST Network ‘Dynamics of Virtual Work‘, etc.). Currently she leads the Jean Monnet Erasmus+ project ’European Union Policies and the Platformisation of Cultural and Audiovisual Sectors’ (2020-2022). Her work has been published in international and domestic scientific journals such as Cultural Trends, International Journal for Cultural Policy, Forum: Qualitative Social Research (FQS), etc. Her latest book entitled From Project to Project: Work and Employment in the Cultural Sector was published in 2021 by BLOK, Zagreb.
Aleksandra Uzelac
Aleksandra Uzelac is Research Advisor at the Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO), Zagreb, Croatia, and Head of the Department for Culture and Communication (http://www.irmo.hr). She holds a PhD (2003) in information science from the University of Zagreb and has over 25 years of professional experience in the area of cultural research related to issues of digital culture and cultural policies. Dr. Uzelac has participated in and coordinated the IRMO team in a number of EU-funded research projects and has also provided her research expertise in the form of research studies and issue papers for the Council of Europe, the European Commission and European Parliament. Her work has been published in international and Croatian scientific journals and books. In 2018, she was co-editor (with Jaka Primorac and Paško Bilić) of the special issue of Croatian International Relations Review on ‘European Union and Challenges of Cultural Policies: Critical Perspectives’. Most recently she coordinated the IRMO team on the H2020 project ‘SoPHIA - Social Platform for Holistic Heritage Impact Assessment’ (2020-2021).