Trends in cultural policy and culture management in Poland (1989-2014) (II)

Setting aside the fact that the lack of a policy is also some kind of policy, while analyzing the events of the last 25 years in cultural policy, from the perspective of the year 2014, can we really say that there is no cultural policy in Poland? The author describes and analyzes the changes in culture management and cultural policy in Poland from the last quarter of a century. The responsibility for cultural policy rests not only with the central authorities, the Ministry of Culture, but also with local governments, which more and more frequently include citizens in the decision-making process. The citizens themselves are becoming more and more aware of their rights. Apart from cultural institutions, non-governmental organizations more and more often become the contractors of public tasks. They co-create and enrich the cultural offer of cities and regions significantly. Not only the number of non-governmental organizations but also their creativity and the professional level of their actions are increasing. Cultural activity is more and more often undertaken by private economic operators (not only art galleries, but also artistic agencies and impresarios). They cannot count on subsidies from local governments any more, but they can become contractors of services at their request under the Public Procurement Law, which, thanks to the last amendment (raising the threshold for public procurement to more than 30,000 EUR), will become a bit easier from the procedural point of view. The role of public cultural institutions is changing. Many of them have redefined their mission and have been successively building new relations with the audience, taking into consideration the changing needs of the consumers and new economic conditions. Despite the underdeveloped sponsorship in Poland, many of them use the conceptions of CSR and CCR, while others diversify their offer, in terms of both the merits and the price, often introducing a commercial offer as a complementary one. The new infrastructure in Poland, in case of many cultural institutions, contributed to a substantial change and improvement of their conditions. After many years of a total investment stagnation in this sphere, together with Poland’s accession to EU, the Polish state and local governments started to undertake tasks in this area more bravely. New infrastructure naturally generates the need for innovation. Cultural institutions more willingly and effectively make use of the new media today (communication with the audience, mailing, FB, promotion, marketing, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing). They more often see the importance of spending money on marketing activities, which they used to economize on in case of a shortfall of funds for substantive activities