Sustaining Cultural Development: Unified Systems and New Governance in Cultural Life

In Sustaining Cultural Development, Biljana Mickov and James Doyle have amassed contributions from authors representing cities throughout Europe, with a view to encouraging policy makers, practitioners and researchers in culture and the arts to adopt a new approach to placing cultural life at the centre of the broader sustainable development of society. The case studies in this collection illustrate new ways of thinking about cultural leadership that point to a shift from more traditional governance in the cultural sector to a new more horizontal approach connecting different sectors and leading towards a more unified culture 'system' that links cultural workers at different levels and in different locations. The editors highlight the fact that platforms, agendas and networks become respectively the conceptual, programmatic and organizational foundations for new governance in the cultural sector. The intention is to combine four key facets: Cultural identity, cultural diversity, creativity, and the participation of citizens in cultural life. The objective is to create favourable conditions for harmonized cultural development contributing to enhanced democratization and development and to the sustainable development of society itself. The experiences recounted in the chapters of this book indicates that if effective programmes resulting in greater participation in cultural life and in culture speaking directly about the important questions of our time are to be further developed, there is both a need for substantial investment in research activity in the area of culture and for the introduction of a functioning system to introduce strategic planning to cultural development. This book will stimulate debate amongst cultural leaders, city managers and other policy makers, as well as serving as a resource for researchers and those teaching and learning on a range of post-graduate courses and programmes.