This edition of Cultural Trends features two policy perspectives and a book review. First up is Carla Figueira who offers her perspective on the recent publication by the European Commission: Towards an EU Strategy for International Cultural Relation. As Figueira notes, it is a document intended to propose the ways in which the EU’s international cultural relations might be developed in order to advance the Union’s objectives and as such neatly dovetails with the European Union Global Strategy. Figueira draws on both of these documents to reflect on what they tell us about how the role of culture is conceived of within the work of the European Union, suggesting that it is the instrumental view of culture that continues to consistently underlie EU policy and action. However, given the current political climate, she cautions against any suggestion that culture alone can act as panacea for all of the social and economic challenges that the EU faces both within and beyond its own boundaries.
In reflecting on the recent NESTA publication: Cultural Policy in the time of the creative industries, the second policy perspective also considers the role of the EU in cultural policy. In offering a summary of Bakhshi and Cunningham’s provocation, Rosa Pérez Monclús and Mehdi Arfaoui find that it echoes some of the arguments made in the European Parliament’s own initiative report: On a coherent EU policy for cultural and creative industries. While agreeing with the central tenets of both documents in regards to the need for reforming cultural policy, Monclús and Arfaoui question if it is really as simple as merely decoupling the creative industries from other forms of cultural practice.
The final contribution to this edition is Robert Hewison’s book review of Sebastian Olma’s new publication: In Defence of Serendipity: For a Radical Politics of Innovation. As Hewison notes, Olma finds the suggestion that there has been a creative transformation of economies to be meaningless. Indeed, his book not only seeks to explode what he sees as the myth of the Creative Industries, but also to argue that the discourses upon which this myth has been built have penetrated social life to such an extent that they now stifle society’s generative, creative capacities. Although Hewison acknowledges that Olma’s is a negative and at times angry voice, he does not believe this detracts from the validity of his arguments and as such, finds this affordable paperback to offer a strong moral message. Given that the preceding policy perspectives have once more reminded us of EU policy-makers’ proclivity for the creative industries agenda, it is perhaps a moral message that they should be minded to read.