CULTURAL POLICIES
- Academic year
- 2024/2025 Syllabus of previous years
- Official course title
- CULTURAL POLICIES
- Course code
- EM3A17 (AF:444262 AR:288520)
- Modality
- On campus classes
- ECTS credits
- 6
- Degree level
- Master's Degree Programme (DM270)
- Educational sector code
- SECS-P/07
- Period
- 3rd Term
- Course year
- 2
- Moodle
- Go to Moodle page
Contribution of the course to the overall degree programme goals
The course has the ambition to present to future arts and cultural managers a view of culture and the arts as social phenomena, deeply involved in political debates and enrolled in transformative ambitions. It is designed as an introduction to why and how cultural policies are shaped and implemented at the local, national, and international scale. Lectures and active learning interactions with students will promote a view of theories and practices of cultural policy as embedded in urban planning, intercultural and international relations, management practices, public administration, creative industries, global media, and business players, as well as local social movements. Cultural policies will be analysed from a historical, comparative, and practical perspective, with a focus on the key players in the field, both public and private, the intersection with other public policies, and the strategic challenges that regions and cities are facing.
Expected learning outcomes
In particular, students are expected to:
1) have developed an understanding of what cultural policy is (solid knowledge of key concepts, terminology, and debates, which inform thinking about cultural policies)
2) have developed an understanding of how cultural policies are shaped at the urban, national and international levels (solid knowledge the key issues and events in the formation of, and responses to, cultural policy initiatives)
3) be able to identify specific cultural policies expressed both explicitly and implicitly through legislation, guidelines, initiatives, and other actions as well as community responses to these policies
4) be able to critically analyse specific cultural policies in terms of policymaking (the who, the how, the why, and the intended and unintended consequences of a policy)
5) Have developed or stengthened academic research abilities: specifically, to generate, craft, develop a research idea, socialize it with peers, and critically discuss it in public.
Pre-requirements
Contents
1) The culture of cultural policy
Which cultural forms and practices have traditionally been considered the responsibility of cultural policy and which have not
High/low culture debate
How cultural activities have been conceived over time (cultural industries, creative economy, creative industries, cultural consumption, cultural capital)
2)The policy of cultural policy
Cultural policy as a form of public policy
Who makes cultural policy? How?
Cultural policy as text, discourse, process and practice
How, where and why cultural policies travel
3) City level: urban cultural policies
Why cultural policies in the cities?
How? Variety of ways in which urban policymakers use culture for policy agendas (economic development, quality of life, city branding, regeneration…)
Consequences? What is at stake and what is at risk in this instrumental use of culture
4) State level: national cultural policies
From direct management of arts and culture to arm’s length approach
Typology of national cultural policy approaches
Specific countries + cross-national comparisons
Interplay between party politics and cultural policy
5) Global level: international cultural policies
Cultural trade, cultural diplomacy, cultural diversity
Agencies of international cultural policy
Global level: international cultural policies
Cultural trade, cultural diplomacy, cultural diversity
Agencies of international cultural policy
Referral texts
Bell, D. & Oakley, K., Cultural Policy, 2015 Routledge
Further optional readings backing up each block of the course will be suggested and shared via Moodle.
Assessment methods
Research paper (70% of the grade):
Students are required to write a research paper (3000-4000 words) on a cultural policy topic of their choice, drawing from theoretical aspects of cultural policy, case studies encountered during lectures, insights from additional reading, engagement in contemporary discussion in the media or from personal experience. The research paper will have to look like an expanded essay that presents the student’s own thinking and interpretation backed up by the ideas of scholars and experts in the field. The research paper will have to feature a review of the literature that requires to research information and then summarize and paraphrasing. It will then add the step of synthesizing the information and developing the student’s own insight or argument on the topic or issue that the information presents. In the research paper, the student is expected to address one central question and develop a thesis, i.e. the answer to the question thus anticipating the type of intellectual exercise that is required for the master thesis. The research paper must be handed in by the date of the oral exam.
This evaluation is designed to assess students' learning outcomes 3-5 (students' ability to identify and critically analyse a specific cultural policy, locating it in a relevant cultural policy debate, while developing/strengthening academic research abilities).
Oral exam (30% of the grade):
A final oral exam on the course contents (key concepts, terminology, debates, and events relating to cultural policymaking, both in general and at the urban/national/international level).
This evaluation is designed to assess students' learning outcomes 1-2 (what cultural policies are and how, why and with which effects they are shaped).
Teaching methods
Teaching language
Type of exam
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals
This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Cities, infrastructure and social capital" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development