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The Rights conferred in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa consider the issue of
language in terms of cultural rights, although with limitation. Section 30 states that:
Everyone has the right to use the language and to participate in the cultural life of
their choice, but no one exercising these rights may do so in a manner inconsistent
with any provision of the Bill of Rights.
If governments have a duty to uphold the ‘right’ to participation in culture, then it follows that they
also have an obligation to monitor the situation to be able to demonstrate effectiveness and
equity. This naturally entails taking some steps through which it can be gauged and
demonstrated to be true.
1.1.2 Recognising cultural value
In recent years there has been a growing academic and political debate around the world about
the ‘value’ and impact of culture. In the absence of any generally accepted theoretical or
methodological base, this is well expressed by Merli (2002): “If we do not understand how the
arts are supposed to produce the social effects claimed for them, how can we expect to develop
and provide empirical evidence?”
UNESCO’s Framework for Cultural Statistics (FCS), launched in 2009, is a tool for organizing
cultural statistics both nationally and internationally. It is based on a conceptual foundation and a
common understanding of culture that will assist the measurement of a wide range of cultural
expressions – irrespective of any particular economic and/or social mode of production. The
FCS is the result of an extensive global consultation process that built upon an earlier 1986
exercise concerned with the effects of globalisation on the production and dissemination of
cultural products, reflecting current practice and intellectual property issues. The FCS through its
standard definitions aims to encourage and facilitate the production of meaningful, internationally
comparable data.
Cultural participation relates to a number of different areas of national policy. In the mid to late
20 th Century cultural participation was above all seen as relating to ‘the arts’ and was treated by
most developed countries as counting visits to museums, galleries and various kinds of
performance. Moreover, emphasis was on ‘high culture’ often through a ‘national’ institution.
While the ‘arts’ still provide a strong rationale for measuring cultural participation, the concept
has widened to include many ‘informal’ and ‘traditional’ activities (UNESCO-UIS, 2009; Throsby,
2010).
Following the development of the concept of ‘creative industries’, in particular the Department of
Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) of the United Kingdom (UK) study of 1997, cultural
participation measures have seen increased emphasis on participation as economic
‘consumption’. Some attention is given below to household expenditure surveys. It is common
for visitor surveys to ask questions on ‘willingness to pay’ to provide data for contingent valuation
of cultural sites and activities. Nonetheless, the emphasis in this paper is in defining ‘cultural
participation’ and considering the broadest range of participation in what kinds of activities.
1.1.3 Measuring culture as an important factor in human wellbeing
Over the past five years or so, research on the impact of culture on wellbeing has proliferated,
following governments’ expressing a heightened concern across the globe for gauging ‘quality of
life’. Encouraged by initiatives such as the OECD’s Istanbul Declaration (2007), governments
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