Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgements
- An Introduction to Cultural Policy in the Polder
- A Well-Balanced Cultural Policy: An Interview with Minister of Culture Ingrid van Engelshoven
- 1 Legal Aspects of Cultural Policy
- 2 An International Perspective on Dutch Cultural Policy
- ‘A Subsidy to Make a Significant Step Upwards’: An Interview with Arjo Klingens
- 3 The Framing Game: Towards Deprovincialising Dutch Cultural Policy
- 4 Values in Cultural Policymaking: Political Values and Policy Advice
- An Exercise in Undogmatic Thinking: An Interview with Gable Roelofsen
- 5 Towards a Cultural Policy of Trust: The Dutch Approach from the Perspective of a Transnational Civil Domain
- 6 Dutch Media Policy: Towards the End of Reflective Diversity?
- ‘A More Holistic Approach to Problems’: An Interview with Hans Poll and Jacqueline Roelofs
- 7 Cultural Education Policy: Its Justification and Organisation
- 8 Culture for Everyone: The Value and Feasibility of Stimulating Cultural Participation
- ‘A Strong Field Needs Variation and Experimentation’: An Interview with Saskia Bak
- 9 The People's Palaces: Public Libraries in the Information Society
- 10 Cultural Policy at a Crossroads?: How the Matthew Effect, New Sociocultural Oppositions and Digitalisation Challenge Dutch National Cultural Policy
- ‘Production is Preceded by Talent Development’: An Interview with Sandra den Hamer
- Epilogue: A Systemic View of Dutch Cultural Policy in the Next 25 Years
- Overview of Dutch Ministers of / Secretaries for Culture and their most important Cultural Policy Documents
- Appendix: Facts and Figures on Culture and Cultural Policy in the Netherlands
- Authors’ Biographies
- Index
10 - Cultural Policy at a Crossroads?: How the Matthew Effect, New Sociocultural Oppositions and Digitalisation Challenge Dutch National Cultural Policy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgements
- An Introduction to Cultural Policy in the Polder
- A Well-Balanced Cultural Policy: An Interview with Minister of Culture Ingrid van Engelshoven
- 1 Legal Aspects of Cultural Policy
- 2 An International Perspective on Dutch Cultural Policy
- ‘A Subsidy to Make a Significant Step Upwards’: An Interview with Arjo Klingens
- 3 The Framing Game: Towards Deprovincialising Dutch Cultural Policy
- 4 Values in Cultural Policymaking: Political Values and Policy Advice
- An Exercise in Undogmatic Thinking: An Interview with Gable Roelofsen
- 5 Towards a Cultural Policy of Trust: The Dutch Approach from the Perspective of a Transnational Civil Domain
- 6 Dutch Media Policy: Towards the End of Reflective Diversity?
- ‘A More Holistic Approach to Problems’: An Interview with Hans Poll and Jacqueline Roelofs
- 7 Cultural Education Policy: Its Justification and Organisation
- 8 Culture for Everyone: The Value and Feasibility of Stimulating Cultural Participation
- ‘A Strong Field Needs Variation and Experimentation’: An Interview with Saskia Bak
- 9 The People's Palaces: Public Libraries in the Information Society
- 10 Cultural Policy at a Crossroads?: How the Matthew Effect, New Sociocultural Oppositions and Digitalisation Challenge Dutch National Cultural Policy
- ‘Production is Preceded by Talent Development’: An Interview with Sandra den Hamer
- Epilogue: A Systemic View of Dutch Cultural Policy in the Next 25 Years
- Overview of Dutch Ministers of / Secretaries for Culture and their most important Cultural Policy Documents
- Appendix: Facts and Figures on Culture and Cultural Policy in the Netherlands
- Authors’ Biographies
- Index
Summary
Looking Into the Future?
In Fractured times: Culture and Society in the 20th Century, a posthumously published collection of essays, the historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) argues that the high culture that was once the basic diet of the European elite is shrivelling fast—either unknown to new generations or else swamped by ‘the present creative flood drowning the globe in image, sound and words, which is almost certain to become uncontrollable in both space and cyberspace’ (Hobsbawn 2012: xv). Fractured Times has the rare quality of looking into the future of cultural life in Western society, discussing topics like ageing audiences and the prospects for artisan crafts in the wired twenty-first century. This final chapter of Cultural Policy in the Polder has a similar aim, though with a much more modest focus. It looks into developments that could influence the aims, the administrative level and the instruments of Dutch national cultural policy, in particular the Cultural Policy Act.
Can one describe developments that have not yet taken place? Hobsbawm felt he was looking ‘guideless and mapless, to an unrecognisable future’ (p. ix). On the one hand, he is right: even experts cannot make predictions, because data about the future can never be verified. On the other hand, the future is not fully undetermined either (Adam & Groves 2007). Therefore, instead of predicting the future, nowadays it is more common to use foresight to get some idea of what might happen. The aim of this is to try to identify possible consequences of policy for the longer term or developments policymakers should relate to (Van Asselt et al. 2010). Both of these aims will be pursued in this chapter.
But what developments or policy consequences should we look at? A lot has changed since the introduction of the CPA in 1993. The political consensus on cultural policy has crumbled under pressure from new political parties such as the Freedom Party (PVV) (Van der Meer 2016, Smithuijsen 2005). This has resulted in fluctuations in the level of culture budgets, which was the most drastic with the cuts implemented 2011. Economic globalisation and more open borders have put pressure on the facilities provided by the welfare state, including the facilities provided under the heading of cultural policy.
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- Cultural Policy in the Polder25 Years Dutch Cultural Policy Act, pp. 243 - 264Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018
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