As promised, I have delved into the Community Arts Network webpage I cited yesterday. Though in all honesty, there wasn’t much delving going on. I hardly clicked upon a link before I came across an article that piqued my interest.

Caron Atlas’ “Cultural Policy: In the board rooms and on the streets” offers some thought provoking stuff. She starts out talking about how pretty much every choice we make in our lives is a cultural policy issue. No big surprise there really. It isn’t something we can escape.

The next paragraph really got me thinking though.

Cultural policy is both a product and a process, a framework for making rules and decisions that is informed by social relationships and values. It is not easily defined in the United States. In fact, for much of our history, our government has had an official policy of not having a cultural policy,…But not calling something a policy does not mean there isn’t any…In the United States, policy and policymaking are more often implicit than explicit, and thus they are frequently invisible. This prevents us, as a country, from being able to have a conversation about the value of art and culture within our society. And de facto or invisible policies can become undemocratic and unaccountable.

This may seem self-evident to many people and I have to admit, subconsciously, I think I derived that notion from everything I have read. But I had an a-ha moment reading that bit about lack of explicit cultural policy acting as an impediment to conversation.

It isn’t just that arts are disappearing from the schools and that the breakdown of the family unit and the competition of computers and DVDs are contributing to the decline in participation in the arts. We, as a people, don’t have the ability to discuss the value of what may be lost. It is all monologue rather than dialogue with the cultural folks talking at rather than with the public.

The situation has as much value as an African bushman trying to explain to me the importance a dangerous practice like hunting a lion with a wooden spear has as a rite of passage. I may admire the courage of the young man engaging in the practice, but I will never grasp how the processes results in the creation of a valuable member of the community.

There are so many nuances that the man understands instinctively having been a part of that culture that it would never occur to him to communicate because he takes them for granted as basic truths. I, on the other hand, would probably have no appreciation for the nuances as they would be foreign to my culture.

Another interesting point that Caron points out is how culture and public policy have been connected, especially as a weapon in the Cold War. (An area Drew McManus just recently explored on his own blog.)

The public works programs of the WPA (Work Projects Administration) in the 1930s and of CETA (Comprehensive Education and Training Administration) in the 1970s supported workforce and community by providing opportunities for artists to help rebuild the nation with their art…In the ’60s, an understanding of art and culture as a scarce resource that needed proactive government support led to the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts…And now, in the post 9/11 21st century, diplomats argue for a U.S. reentry into UNESCO as “a real opportunity to advance the ideological interests of the international coalition against terrorism.

Alas, an initiative to employ our artists in a similar manner in the current international conflict hasn’t emerged (Atlas’ article was written in 2002).

Atlas engages in a good discussion of the myriad decisions in other areas can be de facto cultural policy decisions. She then makes a number of suggestions about how people can become involved or at least aware of how cultural policy is being shaped. One of the suggestions that caught my eye-

Be a sustained part of policy discussions about the other issues besides the arts that are of concern to our communities. Acknowledge and reject priorities set by cultural policy efforts that are not in the interests of a community. For example, arts districts can bring gentrification and cultural development can impose another definition of culture than that which is embraced by community members…

I have often read about how artists move into a neighborhood, the neighborhood becomes the place to be, rents skyrocket and then the artists can no longer afford to live in the place that their very presence made cool. What I never really recognized was that this process could also end up displacing close knit ethnic groups and eroding their identities.

Even if the process doesn’t break up ethnic groups or neighborhoods that have established identities for themselves as a group, folks who might never have had the time, opportunity or inclination to consider cultural activities might just start appreciating the work of those strange artists down the street when the landlord tells them their apartment is about to become a luxury condo at triple the rent.

The situation can also give the impression that culture is only for the rich or perhaps that if the cultural activities were any good, the wealthy would be moving in to co-opt it as their own.

Postscript– No sooner did I post this entry than I remembered, I actually had read about artist wrought gentrification threatening the Hasidic community of Williamburg in Brooklyn (a blogger features this poster about their fears). Thanks to Google, I was able to find a story by a Columbia University journalism student on the topic.

I also found this reprint of a New York Times article about some women who are trying to keep the ethnic members of the community from becoming displaced altogether.