Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Reasearch position paper 4created by the various Cultural Industries Development Agencies set up in the pastfive years across the United Kingdom. The cultural industries support servicesdeveloped within those agencies focus on issues of access, social inclusion andparticipation as much as on business generation. Social inclusion is here understoodas an incentive to cultural production and as a way of fostering civic pride,and a sense of local identity and ownership.The philosophy behind the above developments is that of a “productive” use ofdiversity to create a sustainable skills base and a culture of innovation capable ofyielding economic rewards for everybody. This is an approach that sees culturaldiversity not as a problem to be controlled by top-down policies, but as an asset forthe development of the local community.Some of the developmental concerns mentioned above in relation to culture-ledurban revitalisation formed the premise for the Urban Pilot Programme, launchedby the European Commission a decade ago and completed in 2000. The programmewas designed to explore new ways in which the economic potential ofcities, together with their problems arising from social exclusion, industrial decay,environmental degradation, could be tackled and lessons shared throughoutEurope. Although a definition of cultural diversity was not spelled out, and therewas a bias towards building-based initiatives and away from more innovativeschemes focusing on empowering, networking and skills enhancement projects,some of the projects funded managed to implement interesting examples of integratedsolutions.In Randers in Denmark and in Friedrichshain in Berlin, for instance, culture wasused as a motor for regeneration, especially to create more inclusive urban strategiesdealing with the issues raised by the multicultural background of those cities.In Randers, in particular, the Wonder project, has devoted an area of the city toeducation facilities and exhibition spaces, as well as to workshops andentrepreneurs belonging to the immigrant and refugee population (32% of thetotal). The overall aim here is to allow minorities to achieve a stronger presence onthe labour market as a base for further integration. In Turin, Italy, the Living, NotLeaving project has adopted a more cultural planning approach, with interventionsaimed at the revitalisation of a run-down district of town through initiativesdirectly managed by immigrants, youth and women resident in the area. Issues ofcrime, safety, housing and community empowerment are tackled under theumbrella of quality of life and community renewal.Strategic directions for further researchThe final section of the paper attempts to explore the implications, for policy makers,of the adoption of a cultural planning framework capable of addressing culturaldiversity. As Franco Bianchini and I have pointed out (1997), in a study forthe Council of Europe on the impact of cultural initiatives on neighbourhoods ofeleven different cities across Europe, traditional cultural policies tend to showtheir limits, both when dealing with the changes affecting contemporary cities, and129