Definition of Cultural Mediation

Cultural mediation is often reduced to a set of transmission techniques. Here I propose a definition that places the person at the center: an ethics of relationship creating the conditions for a singular experience.

Mediation as ethics, not technique

Cultural mediation is a set of methods and techniques, but in my view it is above all an ethics, a creative place that we do or do not give to the other. I say creative because receiving is creating, it is being active. And so we most often consider cultural mediation as a set of methods for transmitting culture, for sharing elements to understand a work for example. This vision, although the most widespread, seems to me very incomplete, and even false.
Mediation is most often justified by playful or participatory devices whose ultimate purpose remains the transmission of pre-existing knowledge. The objective, almost always, is to transmit culture. We start from the hypothesis that there would be a culture that is foreign to us and that through mediation we will discover it, understand it, be enriched by it. This conception, which Serge Chaumier qualifies as “conservative” (La médiation culturelle, Armand Colin, 2017), remains the one shared by the majority of professionals and institutions.

Yet, as Jean Caune writes: “Focusing on the phenomenon of mediation means emphasizing the relationship rather than the object; it means questioning the enunciation rather than the content of what is stated; it means privileging reception rather than dissemination” (La démocratisation culturelle, une médiation à bout de souffle, PUG, 2006). Cultural mediation is, or should be, something quite different from a transmission of information: it is above all a connection with oneself, with others, with the world, that is to say an engaged lived experience.

This distinction between two conceptions of mediation is not merely a semantic nuance. It involves deep philosophical and political choices about the place we accord to people in our cultural frameworks. Behind the apparent technical neutrality of the term mediation lie opposing conceptions and what Serge Chaumier calls a “paradigmatic duality.”

Experience against erudition

If we go to a museum, we tell ourselves that we will come out having learned things, being richer in knowledge than we had going in. But what is “knowledge”? Is it encyclopedic knowledge on a subject, erudition? Would mediation therefore be the transmission of erudition? Is this why so many people go to the great museums? To become more erudite? Of course not, the driving force is something else.

Yes, some people seek erudition, and find their happiness in knowing, in knowing more. But this is not at all the case for everyone. Most people simply aspire to live well, according to very variable criteria depending on each individual. So, what really motivates them in visiting a museum, which is precisely a space of cultural mediation, a place where we will be put in contact with cultures that we do not encounter in our daily lives?
What we will experience in a museum is an experience, a social experience, it is a lived reality. It is not just information that we will receive, it is something in which we will engage. John Dewey had formulated this idea as early as 1934 in Art as Experience: “The value of experience lies not only in the ideals it reveals, but in its power to unveil various ideals” and “the value of ideals lies in the experiences they make possible.”

The aesthetic experience is, consequently, the paradigm of experience in itself, for Dewey, since it allows awareness of the transformations brought about by interactions between the individual and the environment. Art conceived as experience allows us to restore this power to act, and requires that aesthetic concepts and working methods be judged by their ability to improve our lived, embodied experience.

The example of the Louvre: an experience of royalty

Let us take the example of the Louvre Museum, which has immense success, well beyond the borders of France, through tourism and through the brand associated with it. Why is it so powerful? Because of the quality of the works or collections? Let us not be naive, this is obviously not what makes its aura. The Louvre Museum was the residence of the kings of France. It is a place that has become a brand, with immense symbolic power.

It is a place of mediation, not because of the works it contains, but because of the place it gives us in our lived experience when we visit it. We have been in the residence of kings and we had the right to walk through it and, as if we were a king or queen, to enjoy its treasures. The Louvre does not even need to tell us this or show us the former royal apartments. It places the symbol well above. We are in the place of sovereigns. And even at the Louvre Abu Dhabi or the Louvre Lens, we enter, we are like a king or queen, because the brand carries its symbolism. Even a counterfeit Louis Vuitton bag or Omega watch still carries its symbolism, qualifies our identity.

But what happened to us during our visit to the Louvre is not a role-play that we would have performed. It is a reality that is singular to us that we have lived. It is our personal experience of a form of contemporary royalty. When someone goes to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, the essence of their experience is not in the aesthetic contemplation of the work itself, but in the social and identity experience they live. There is an identity transformation: “I have been to the Louvre” is not equivalent to “I have never been to the Louvre”. This difference in status is at the heart of what mediation produces. In this example, it is the museum as place that serves as mediation.

So mediation is not transmission. Mediation is the creation of an experience. And it is we ourselves who create our experience of being a “little king/queen” at the Louvre. We are creators of our experience.

The visitor as generator of experiences

If mediation is the creation of experience, then the visitor, the audiences are no longer recipients but generators of experiences, as Serge Chaumier formulates it. Through mediation, it is then a matter of revealing the person to themselves, of allowing them to discover new spaces within themselves, to develop interpretations, to share them, to communicate them, to put them up for debate.

It is therefore a relationship with oneself, and a relationship with others, that becomes the stake of the mediation approach, reconnecting with the etymological meaning of the term. By rediscovering the very fundamentals of cultural action, that is to say what is at play in the mechanisms of interculturality, a connection of oneself to others, and of one’s capacity to connect different worlds, hitherto distant or separated, disjointed, mediation becomes that which participates in the process of acculturation. It is above all an encounter.
The mediation professional increasingly becomes a designer of frameworks for expression that users can seize to create their own content, mental or even material, within the framework of participatory cultural projects. The mediator is more of an activator or developer than a supplier of information. Professions are therefore called upon to evolve to invent forms of co-construction of a more diversified and less top-down culture.
We ourselves, cultural professionals, must therefore create the conditions for this experience. But it is the visitor who lives them and who lives them in their own way, which is completely singular to them. This approach profoundly transforms the professional posture: it is no longer about being an expert transmitting knowledge to an ignorant person, but about creating the conditions for an authentic encounter, fully inscribed in people’s lives.

Respect for dignity: the ethical foundation of mediation

This is why I truly see cultural mediation as a commitment to respecting the dignity of the other and a way of giving visitors, spectators, participants the conditions so that this experience can be a true life experience, their own, and that it enriches their life with a lived experience, and not with knowledge, an exceptional, unique lived experience that is theirs, in this moment of sharing organized by cultural professionals.

Cultural rights require that we recognize through our actions the full dignity of each person, that we rethink their place in the encounter with works. As the Fribourg Declaration (2007) reminds us, cultural identity is “the ensemble of cultural references through which a person, alone or in community, defines themselves, constitutes themselves, communicates and wishes to be recognized in their dignity”. This definition places the person, not the work or knowledge, at the center of the process.

What I have called the “aesthetics of relationship” extends the traditional aesthetics of the object. It is no longer only a matter of concerning ourselves with the formal quality of what we show, but also with the quality of the relationship we establish with people. This evolution in no way implies the abandonment of artistic standards. On the contrary, we must cultivate this standard even more deeply, expand it to integrate the aesthetics of relationship, beyond the aesthetics of the image, sound, scenography or musical composition.

As I was able to formulate in the context of one of my consultancy projects: “Cultural mediation is a mode of relationship with the other that aims to create a social experience through art and culture” and “it does not establish a hierarchy between the cultures of some and others.”

Cultural democratization and cultural democracy

This distinction between two conceptions of mediation covers a broader political tension between cultural democratization and cultural democracy. Cultural democratization, in its stated ambition to make great works accessible to all of humanity, proceeds from a vertical logic: there is a legitimate culture that must be transmitted to those who do not have access to it. This approach, inherited from French cultural policy since Malraux, presupposes a hierarchy of cultural values.
Cultural democracy proceeds from a different, horizontal logic: it recognizes the plurality of cultures and the capacity of each person to contribute to collective cultural life. It is no longer just access that matters, but active participation and recognition of each person’s cultural expressions. Cultural rights, enshrined in French law since 2015 (NOTRe law) and 2016 (LCAP law), constitute the legal framework for this cultural democracy.

To quote a phrase from Adorno: “It is not a matter of preserving the past, but of realizing our hopes”. Heritage only has meaning if it is placed at the service of the community, otherwise it is a matter for collectors, and not a public service. If we draw all the consequences from this, it implies that it is not necessarily conservation that should be the priority in institutions, but public services, or at least that a balance should be struck between the two functions of the institution.

This transformation implies radically rethinking cultural mediation. It is no longer a matter of a unilateral translation of legitimate knowledge, but of a dialogue, a sharing of experiences and know-how. The mediation mission must enable the creation of a common culture from different frames of reference, recognizing the diversity of approaches and cultural practices.

Mediation as connection

Mediation is therefore elaborated on at least two levels: from self to self and from self to others. The first level concerns what happens in each person during the encounter with a work, a place, a cultural proposition. The second level concerns the social dimension of this experience, what is shared, what circulates between people.

It is a matter of creating spaces of trust where audiences can express their tastes, their rejections, their ways of doing things, without being judged. It is by taking a genuine interest in these “uses” that cultural institutions will be able to rebuild connections with citizens and reaffirm their relevance. Cultural mediators must learn to value the skills developed by audiences, including new skills linked to digital practices.

The challenge is to build a true cultural democracy, where each person is recognized in their capacity to contribute to collective cultural life. This involves a profound questioning of cultural hierarchies and positions of authority. What is sometimes called “mediation as revelation” does not start from the object to address a subject, but on the contrary focuses on the person. It is then the person who becomes the heart and the priority element, and the collections and knowledge are only occasions for connection.

What counts then is the lived experience, the stakes of interpretations and appropriations, the words spoken and the relationship forged. Mediation becomes a matter of emancipation. The forms furthest from the institution, which have been able to express themselves with the most freedom, come to infuse their principles right to the heart of institutions.

Creating the conditions for experience

Mediation, as I conceive it, consists in creating the conditions for an authentic experience to occur. These conditions are multiple: they concern space, time, the posture of the mediator, the quality of the welcome, the freedom left to people. A museum with a monumental entrance, for example, places us in a certain position, puts us in a certain state of mind, which conditions our experience.

The digital giants practice user experience design (UX design), with permanent testing and adjustments. This approach has nothing to do with low-grade marketing. It is taking care of connections, and this is how it should be considered in the cultural field. Taking care of connections is an essential part of our professions. UX design takes into account, for example, the needs of visitors with physical, sensory or cognitive limitations.

The co-construction of projects with residents consists in placing them at the heart of projects, from their definition and conception to their adaptation. It is a matter of better integrating residents into cultural projects, through joint support from cultural teams and artists. This approach profoundly transforms professional practices.

The mediator is not always the one who provides information: they can present themselves, and undoubtedly increasingly do so, as the person who facilitates the expression of participants, their listening and their dialogue. They then appear as a stimulator, a regulator of exchanges to authorize and deploy the taking of the floor. Mediation is then what stimulates, what creates occasions, places for sharing.

A definition centered on the person

I therefore propose this definition of cultural mediation: cultural mediation is an ethics of relationship, which consists in creating the conditions for a singular experience for each person, in respect for their dignity and cultural identity. It places the person, not the work or knowledge, at the center of the process. It recognizes that receiving is creating, and that each visitor, spectator or participant is a generator of their experience.

This definition is situated within the perspective of cultural rights and cultural democracy. It implies a profound transformation of professional postures, moving from the top-down transmission of legitimate knowledge to the creation of conditions for an authentic encounter. It requires taking into account the aesthetics of relationship as much as the aesthetics of the object.

This conception of mediation is not an abstract utopia. It is already practiced in many contexts, often on the margins of institutions, sometimes at their heart. It corresponds to a profound evolution in audience expectations and forms of participation in cultural life. The renewal of generations leads to multiplying demands for voice and involvement from those who no longer necessarily see themselves as recipients, but increasingly as contributors, even partners, co-constructors of the actions carried out.

I situate myself in the lineage of thinkers like John Dewey, but also Patrice Meyer-Bisch on cultural rights, the Fribourg Declaration, and all those who work towards a culture that is truly at the service of the human community. It would be time to draw inspiration from this work, otherwise it is a whole sector that could lose its meaning and democratic legitimacy.