Culture in for and as Sustainable Development

and education for supporting innovations,
but also to enable citizens’ awareness and
engagement in culture and social life, which
can contribute to an emergence of innovations
in a remarkable way. Engaging in dynamic
grassroots movements – animated,
for example, by artistic communities – can
lead to a joint spirit, collaboration, and result
in multi-actor dialogues, new networks and
institutional arrangements.
Bottom-up and participatory approaches can
help to create ideas and actions leading
toward sustainable local communities, but
without systemic support from the local government
such initiatives cannot be sustainable
in the long run [37]. It is therefore crucial
to recognise the complexity of multi-stakeholder
processes in policy-making, and consciously
cope with this complexity. Enabling
policies and planning processes are needed
to support these grassroots initiatives, including
recognition and power to grassroots
innovation actors and processes and involving
them within an inclusive, multi-scale innovation
politics.
seems evident. Yet culturally sensitive policy
structures to guide our societies – and, collectively,
the world – into the future are still
the exception.
Until recently, cultural sustainability has been
advocated most strongly by actors associated
with the artistic and creative sectors, but
the realisation of the importance of culture
for human-centred sustainable development
is steadily gaining traction among nations
(e.g., the Group of Friends of Culture and
Development, launched in September 2013
by 15 UN Member States), cities (brought
together through the United Cities and Local
Governments organisation and guided
by Culture 21: Actions, approved in March
2015), and international agencies led by
UNESCO. However, we realise that the
struggle to develop and implement policies
that more fully and more strongly relate to
the integration of culture with sustainability
and development continues. The field is
challenged by multiple definitions and perspectives
about these relationships, which
characterises its complexity and multidimensional
character.
Conclusions and
reflections on policy
In the context of international negotiations
to develop the post-2015 global Sustainable
Development Goals, and amid international
efforts to incorporate explicit mentions
of culture within this agreement, the policy
‘scripts’ described here reveal the broad
contours of a new type of policy landscape.
A wide range of research and policy efforts
is striving for greater articulation and clarity,
and the need to generate a greater ‘actionability’
of culture in sustainable development
In closing this chapter, we emphasise again
that culture is not just a topic of cultural policy.
It should also inform and be integrated
within all other policies. Increasingly it is argued
that all the best and most successful
policies are culturally informed, although not
necessarily consciously. Yet many policies
and programs have been traditionally implemented
only in a top-down ‘one size fits
all‘ manner, with too little regard for the cultural
specificities of the people and places
involved. Experience has shown that such a
practice is problematic and generally not effective.
And while the idea of a cultural lens
on all public policies and plans to ensure local
development proceeds in harmony with
local cultural contexts has been discussed
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