OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

CONCLUSION - DESIGNING LOCAL PUBLIC POLICIES
information to consumers, and sometimes granting subsidies to make cultural
goods and services more accessible.
• When they become specific, these policies will observe scientific or political
criteria, but rarely will they reflect a desire to redistribute cultural activities within
a territory.
• Any specific government intervention in culture can lead to the substitution of
collective or even bureaucratic choices for private choices, something that is
traditionally subject to criticism in the field of culture.
These factors explain why it is so difficult for governments to support local initiatives
in this field, unless of course such initiatives have a scientific rationale or are based
on redistribution goals openly espoused by governments. This view is fairly traditional
and takes no account of the new roles that culture plays in local development, those
relating to producing a culture for the territory, or to instituting creativity districts. In
adopting too narrow a view of culture — reducing it essentially to its tourism aspect
— these other effects may be overlooked. Governments can have a role to play,
whether it is in training, in providing information on cultural product markets, or in doing
the research needed to maintain and adapt artistic knowledge and know-how:
• by ensuring that ministries and departments understand and accept their
responsibility for such objectives (education systems can instill a project
culture; the justice system must guard against fakes and counterfeits; land-use
legislation must allow craft enterprises to continue operating under reasonable
conditions in traditional districts, etc.);
• by fostering an environment conducive to the local contributions of culture:
supporting a system of artistic training; recognising, classifying and protecting
heritage resources; helping certain professions to survive and to pass on their
know-how; combating forgeries, etc.;
• by offering a decentralised decision-making framework where local stakeholders
can debate the issues among themselves and with central authorities;
• by developing incentives in the form of contracts, funding competitions, etc.
We must certainly not ignore the risk of bureaucratising culture through a centralised
approach to interventions. But neither can we ignore the existence and use values
that culture generates to the benefit of local development.
164 CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005