Arts and the city in post-Soviet contexts: Policy pathways and interventions in urban cultural development in Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT

This paper reflects on urban cultural development in a post-Soviet context. Most literature on arts and the city focuses either on Western cities, often recovering from post-industrial decline, or emerging global cities. However, post-socialist cities have remained under-investigated. The paper argues that the existing accounts of urban cultural development often underestimate the impact of national policy frameworks and historical trajectories. In post-Soviet countries, these national dynamics—often responding to broader diplomatic and cultural shifts—need to be considered. The paper uses the case study of Kazakhstan and its two major cities Almaty and Astana (recently renamed Nur-Sultan) to explore the role of path dependence and national policy in urban cultural development. It concludes by arguing for integrating a complexity perspective into the study of arts and the city, looking at macro policy and infrastructural changes, meso local urban responses, and micro dynamics of collaboration and work amongst creative and cultural practitioners in cities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The research was conducted during 2016–2018 and therefore in this paper, we use the denomination Astana, which was the city’s name during the research project. In March 2019, suddenly the city was renamed Nur-Sultan after President Nursultan Nazarbayev resigned from his long-term role between 1990 and 2019.

2. Detailed data represented in Figure 3 are available from the corresponding author, Sana Kim, upon request.

3. One important institution within Astana’s public cultural infrastructure—the State Academic Russian Drama Theater named after M. Gorky—is not represented in the data behind this figure as it was founded in the end of the 19th century in 1899, which is beyond the figure’s scope.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sana Kim

Sana Kim is a PhD candidate in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. In her thesis, she empirically investigates the effects that the unique event in the history of Kazakhstan—the move of the capital city from Almaty to Astana (now Nur-Sultan)—has had on the development of culture and creativity in the two cities. Highlighting the complex nature of this development, she applies ideas of complexity to the investigation and explores the concept of the creative ecosystem as an alternative to the creative economy. In 2015 she conducted a collaborative project, “Cultural Institutions and Policy Development in Kazakhstan,” with Calvert 22 Foundation and in 2017 she was commissioned by the British Council Kazakhstan to examine cultural skills gaps and shortages in Almaty and Astana.

Roberta Comunian

Roberta Comunian is Reader in Creative Economy at the Department for Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. She is interested in the relationship between public and private investments in the arts and cultural regeneration projects, cultural and creative industries and complexity. She has previously researched the role of higher education in the creative economy and has explored in various papers the career opportunities of creative graduates in the UK. She has recently coordinated an Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) international research network on Creative Economies in Africa and is currently involved in the H2020 European Union funded research project entitled DISCE Developing inclusive and sustainable creative economies.