OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

CONCLUSION - DESIGNING LOCAL PUBLIC POLICIES
existence, we can identify some factors that will help a territory to foster the required
links between culture and creativity 119 .
• As a starting point, people and communities within a territory must be “immersed”
in the consumption and the production of cultural goods. This can be achieved
by promoting online culture as a new learning resource 120 . But it can just as well
be done by offering free access to museums or public libraries. This can be an
appropriate point for introducing training in artistic skills, provided it is cast
in terms of the development project dimension and of incentives to the creation
of artistic enterprises.
• Developing cultural entrepreneurship in this way requires specific physical and
financial facilities, such as those funded by Britain’s National Endowment for
Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), which uses proceeds from the
National Lottery to create and support entrepreneurship incubators.
• Such initiatives require sturdy, long-term partnerships between the artistic
and non-artistic sectors, or between private businesses and associations or
non-profit enterprises. The risky and shifting nature of cultural goods means
that enterprises must be mutually “plugged in” so that they can respond
promptly by redefining and recombining their products. Finally, these
partnerships must provide for the oft-missing strategic links between production
and marketing.
These needs are even more strongly felt in developing countries, where there is
a general lack of support for artists; the creative crafts are gradually disappearing; there
is no protection for artistic property or, worse, existing protection is counterproductive;
there are no local markets to encourage the emergence of cultural goods and, generally
speaking, local governments fail to take account of such production 121 .
What role is there for national or regional policies ?
While recognising the importance of local policies for making culture a lever of
development, we must not overlook the role of national or regional policies.
The potential contribution of national policies is not always given its due. There
are several reasons for this :
• National or regional policies relating to culture are, of course, horizontal policies
that seek above all to improve the environment within which cultural projects
can flourish. They make themselves felt primarily through offering training for
artists, protecting intellectual property rights, preserving heritage, providing
CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005 163