Author: Day, Douglas and Bulger, Peggy A.

Publication Year: 2001

Media Type: Report

Summary:

One organization has defined cultural policy as, “in the aggregate, the values and principles, which guide any social entity in cultural affairs.”

Abstract:

One organization has defined cultural policy as, “in the aggregate, the values and principles, which guide any social entity in cultural affairs.”

These values and principles may or may not be codified, may or may not be explicit. It has been recognized that in the United States, cultural policy has rarely been formally defined, except in the loosest terms. In general, what we have seen is a de facto cultural policy, “amounting to the ‘side-effects’ of social action taken without consideration of cultural impact.”

When attempts have been made to define cultural policy more explicitly, those attempts have often been formulated in the rhetoric of “cultural democracy” or “cultural equity.”

It is not accidental that when agencies of federal and state government align themselves with a populist strategy, the folk arts and folklife of the nation come to the forefront of the debate. This was evidenced during the New Deal’s WPA cultural work, as well as in the post-Contract with America reorganization of the National Endowment for the Arts under Jane Alexander – both periods of heightened “democratic” and egalitarian rhetoric.

Public sector or applied folklore work has often and naturally been seen as a tool appropriately used in service of an idealized cultural democracy. Given the field’s historical association with grassroots communities, ethnic groups, minority cultures and other disenfranchised segments of American culture, it should not be surprising that when cultural agencies look to expand their constituencies outside of their core (some say elitist) base, they enlist the aid of folklife specialists, community scholars and related culture brokers in their cause.

It has certainly been the case that in recent years, in an era of devolution and decentralization of the nation’s cultural resources, when cultural organizations have had to re-think their missions and funding strategies, many organizations have turned to models of consensus-building, community development, and interdisciplinary collaboration that folk culture workers have consciously developed over many years. Offices of folklife programs, however they’ve been configured, have long used strategies of improvisation, adaptability, and “making do,” even during flush times when their work flew “below the radar” of their executive directors and boards. [p.1]

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Legislation, Federal, Cultural Planning, Civic Dialogue and Social Change, Access and Equity