Budgets are shrinking, and the cultural sector most often responds by defending what it has. I believe that response is a losing one, not for lack of courage but because it places us on our opponents’ ground. I have written an entire book on this, Defending culture differently : methods for tomorrow, free to download, and it is the subject I have been asked about most over the past year. Here are the possible ways in.
First direction: funding cuts are the wrong subject
Arguing about amounts means accepting that the question is budgetary, when it is political: what is public money for culture for, and for whom. This talk retraces how the bond between culture and political power came undone, from the post-war years to today, and why the legitimacy we thought we had acquired no longer holds. It comes from The Misguided Debate on Funding Cuts for Culture and from Culture and political power : from a marriage of convenience to a consummated divorce.
Second direction: designing projects that survive
A more operational direction, made for teams that do not only want to analyse. I have formalised an antifragility method for cultural projects, which consists in designing from the origin what will hold if the grant, the person or the calendar disappears. It extends into a reflection on a project’s balance and supports, and into an approach to evaluation that is chosen rather than endured. See Build antifragility for cultural projects, Balance and supports and Towards voluntary evaluation of cultural projects.
Third direction: what we avoid seeing
The most uncomfortable talk, and often the most useful. Our venues sometimes stage the very opposite of their discourse: young people forced to attend the theatre under threat of sanction in the name of emancipation, participatory schemes entirely decided in advance, presentation texts that enact the domination they claim to fight. I only propose it to teams ready to hear it, and I prepare it with the management. See What we avoid seeing when we defend culture, The Dramatization of Mistrust and What Artistic Discourse Reveals About Itself.
Fourth direction: marginality as a starting point
Observing that cultural institutions have become marginal in people’s real cultural lives is not an admission of defeat, it is the starting point of a strategy. This direction links the diagnosis to proposals for rebuilding, and suits management seminars and work on an institution’s project. See The marginality of cultural institutions, France’s cultural sector faces the urgent need for a rethink and Re-engaging France’s public cultural sector as a good corporate citizen.
Fifth direction: building narratives rather than reports
What elected officials and funders lack is not figures, it is credible accounts of what really happens, produced with the people concerned. That is a skill that can be learned, and a talk can lay out its principles and have the room produce a sample. See Beyond Mobilizing Audiences : Building Democratic Narratives and Cooperative Narratives.
What happens in the room
On this subject, people have a great deal to say and few places to say it. So I reduce the share of exposition and increase that of collective elaboration: close reading of a short text, a moving debate on statements that divide, individual writing and then a contribution wall. I have seen a group write a common advocacy text, twelve hands in one afternoon, and it remains one of the most useful things I have watched a room produce.
What remains
The contributions stay online, and I turn them into an edited synthesis if you wish. For a local authority or a network, this document often becomes a support for dialogue with elected officials, which is precisely the use I intend for it.
Formats and preparation
An hour and a half opening professional gatherings, a full-day management seminar, or support over time. I prepare with you through video calls, and I tell you honestly if I think the chosen direction does not match what your teams can take in today. And when this advocacy must be carried before elected officials by your own management rather than by an outside speaker, I can support the person concerned in building and holding that speech themselves [see the page “What if someone from your team did the talking?”, to be linked once published]. Talks are given in French and in English.
Some past talks
« Culture differently : postures and methods for tomorrow » for the Cultures du Cœur network; What words do to cultural policy; Why the power to act is so often experienced as a transgression; An advocacy document written by twelve people in one afternoon.
All the resources: Defending culture differently : methods for tomorrow.