Cultural Democracy:Towards a policy of cultural representation

During the past five decades, production and consumption of art have democratised: our smartphone contains numerous apps to create music, movies, and pictures, as well as access to platforms to instanteneously share our work with the world, and for everyone to evaluate. Along with this democratisation traditional value regimes in the arts lost their significance. The process of meaning making resulting from the engagement with any form of art and culture became to be seen as more important for many people than canonical value of certain art works. This has consequences for how governments relate to the arts. Through subsidising and support structures, governments canonise art and its institutes and willingly or unwillingly favour traditional power relations. Cultural policy is therefor not as democratic as it could be