The Arts and Social Inclusion

The relationship of civic participation to cultural engagement pulls us into an old controversy regarding intrinsic vs. instrumental values of the arts.In this presentation, Stern cites international scholarship—at the cross-section of welfare economics, philosophy, and social welfare—as a way out of this impasse. The Europeans have explored a multi-dimensional approach to social inclusion vs. social exclusion. He points out that viewing the arts and culture as a dimension of social inclusion changes the kinds of policy questions we ask about the sector. First, we\u27d focus on access and opportunity to participate in the arts and how these are distributed across the geographic and social landscape. Second, we could ask how cultural inclusion may provide a means of reducing other forms of social exclusion