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Recommendation 1990 (2012) Final version
The right of everyone to take part in cultural life
The right of everyone to take part in cultural life
1. The Parliamentary Assembly notes that the right of
everyone to take part in cultural life presupposes equal and free
access for all to a variety of cultural resources. This participation
may be more or less active, depending on whether one is a member
of an audience, practises an activity as an amateur or engages in artistic
or creative activities on a professional basis.
2. The Assembly believes that it is the responsibility of States
and local public authorities to ensure the necessary conditions
are met to “develop to the fullest the talents with which nature
has blessed Man and thereby to establish among all citizens an actual
equality and make a reality of the political equality recognised by
law” (Condorcet, Report on public instruction, presented to the
National Assembly on 20 and 21 April 1792).
3. Common cultural wealth is a matter for all public and private
stakeholders, but the State must assume its crucial role. As the
major cultural agent, the State not only has a responsibility to
ensure a wide supply of cultural services, through all its public
institutions, but also acts as an initiator, promoter and regulator
of synergies between public institutions and organisations in the
non-profit and private sectors which contribute to the protection
and promotion of cultural heritage, to artistic creative endeavour,
and to the public access to the full range of cultural and artistic
resources.
4. The State likewise has a duty to take account of the radical
changes in the methods of accessing culture, with the boom of digital
culture and the Internet; to facilitate the emergence of new artists
and new forms of expression; and to further develop new ways of
disseminating cultural content in order to make it accessible to all.
5. In a robust democracy, guarantor of diversity, the obligations
to respect, protect and realise cultural rights should be interpreted
as an integrated obligation to produce results in terms of cultural
democratisation, paving the way for equal access to the arts. This
integrated obligation to produce results involves creating an open-ended
environment that allows everyone to achieve personal fulfilment
and to participate in cultural, social and political life.
6. Access to the arts allows all human beings to balance the
realm of the mind with the realm of feeling. The two should complement
and enhance one another so that every individual can realise his
or her full potential, and see others under a new light. Through
cultural ties and intercultural dialogue, access to the arts thus
helps to promote “harmonious living together” within a society,
a country, and even between peoples, fostering relationships between
the citizens of the world through enhanced mutual understanding.
Moreover, access to the arts and free artistic and cultural expression
contribute to the development of critical thinking and therefore
to reinforcing democratic citizenship.
7. Access to the arts is especially important for young people,
in particular those aged between 15 and 25 who are at a critical
time in their lives when they are building a future for themselves
as adult citizens. Introducing them to cultural resources is a process
that draws on their subjective sensitivity and creative imagination,
and gives them considerable freedom of initiative (not sufficiently
accorded to members of this age group).
8. Standing as they do at the crossroads between generations,
young people are a key means of transmitting cultural resources
and values within society. From an intergenerational and social
cohesion perspective, one of the main responsibilities of policy
makers is to cultivate – especially among young people – the “desire
for culture”, without which – however good the cultural offer and
whatever the conditions of access may be – young people will not
feel engaged. In order to encourage them, policy makers need to
involve them more directly in cultural activities, promote ground-breaking
initiatives and raise the profile of any practices that create cultural,
social and political bonds.
9. In this context, it is necessary to favour artistic and cultural
resources that enable encounters (between members of the public,
artists and/or creators): the performing arts (theatre, opera, concerts,
circus acts, etc.) and the visual arts (exhibitions, performance
art, etc.) provide these opportunities for encounters. Special attention
also needs to be paid to the ways in which young people access artistic
and cultural activities, which greatly help to build their self-confidence
by enabling them to discover the many facets of their personality.
10. Participation in the arts serves to enhance our societies’
artistic and cultural heritage, thanks to the many and varied creations
that it generates. Support for innovative young creative talent
is vital therefore because without it, future heritage would be
impoverished. Therefore, policy makers have a duty to boldly embrace innovation
in order to secure for future generations what they will, in time,
come to see as a classic heritage of universal value, as bequeathed
to us by our forbears.
11. The Assembly notes with regret that, beyond the constant talk
in favour of cultural rights, material, financial and human resources
and the information, mediation and artistic and cultural education
systems in place still do not make it possible to translate effectively
and fairly (national and international) professions of faith and
declarations, despite the wide variety of initiatives and projects
and the professionalism of the people who work in these areas.
12. The right to take part in cultural life is pivotal to the
system of human rights. To forget that is to endanger this entire
system, by depriving human beings of the opportunity to responsibly
exercise their other rights, through lack of awareness of the fullness
of their identity.
13. The Parliamentary Assembly therefore recommends that the Committee
of Ministers:
13.1. formally endorse
the “Guidelines for developing policies to ensure effective participation
in cultural life” attached to this recommendation, of which they
form an integral part;
13.2. forward this recommendation to all the member States,
so that they can be guided by it when framing their national policies;
13.3. forward this recommendation to those intergovernmental
committees and the secretariat of the intergovernmental sector of
the organisation responsible for programmes relating to culture,
education, technological innovation, youth and equal opportunities,
asking them to:
13.3.1. duly incorporate the promotion of
the right of everyone to participate in cultural life into current
projects (for example, projects on education for democratic citizenship
and human rights);
13.3.2. duly incorporate the promotion of the right of everyone
to participate in cultural life into any initiatives that might
be launched in the framework of the reflection on “living together”
and of the partnership between the European Commission and the Council
of Europe in the field of youth policy, research and youth work;
13.4. set up a committee of experts or a transversal working
group and instruct it to:
13.4.1. consider what could be
done to facilitate co-ordinated political action at European level in
order to promote the right of everyone to participate in cultural
life;
13.4.2. consider what could be done to improve co-operation between
the Council of Europe, the European Union and other international
bodies in implementing targeted programmes to encourage youth participation
in cultural life and to support innovative creative activities,
in particular those related to the technological evolutions;
13.4.3. collect and assess examples of national good practice
with a view to preparing practical proposals, which the competent
intergovernmental committees would then examine, approve and submit
to the Committee of Ministers for adoption;
13.5. invite the European Union and UNESCO to this committee
of experts or transversal working group and to closely involve in
its work the Parliamentary Assembly, the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities
of the Council of Europe, the Conference of International Non-Governmental
Organisations of the Council of Europe and the Advisory Council
on Youth;
13.6. in the light of the conclusions and practical proposals
submitted to it, take appropriate measures to develop specific plans
for co-operation between the Council of Europe, the European Union
and UNESCO, aimed at supporting the implementation of the right
of everyone to take part in a variety of cultural activities and
to increase, in particular, young people’s participation in cultural
life, both as members of the public and as practitioners;
13.7. in the framework of the programme on “Democratic governance
through educational, culture and youth policies”, instruct the CultureWatchEurope
Platform to establish a set of indicators on the participation of
different groups, in particular youth, in cultural life, and to
monitor developments in this field.
14. The Assembly invites the European Conferences of Ministers
responsible for culture, education, youth and digital technology
(media) to take this recommendation into account and to include
in their respective agendas the issue of more effective promotion
of cultural rights, including the right of everyone to take part
in cultural life, both as members of the public and as practitioners,
all over Europe.
15. The Assembly, recognising the increasingly important role
played by local and regional authorities in promoting and implementing
cultural rights, invites the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities
of the Council of Europe to take this recommendation into account
and to incorporate it into its work programme.
16. The Assembly is of the opinion that greater consideration
should be given to the right of everyone to take part in cultural
life in the work of the Council of Europe’s European Centre for
Global Interdependence and Solidarity (North-South Centre); the
Assembly therefore invites the Centre’s bodies to include in its
projects discussions on the effective implementation of this right
and on the contribution it makes to the harmonious development of
civilisations through greater creative diversity and multi- and
intercultural dialogue.
Appendix – Guidelines for developing policies to ensure effective participation in cultural life
(open)I. General guidelines
1. Recognise cultural rights as rights that permit each
person, alone or in community with others, to develop all his or
her abilities to be a thinking and feeling being and all his or
her capacities for creative imagination. Recognise that these rights
are primary needsfor the
entire human species, which is designed to live in society: essential
levers for cultural interchange and intercultural dialogue, cultural
rights are also pillars of the principle of “living together” within
society, thanks to common cultural and artistic references that
provide access to all the humanist values handed down in democratic,
liberal societies.
2. Affirm the right of everyone to take part in cultural life
as the right that encapsulates the full set of cultural rights for,
if properly guaranteed, it will pave the way for equal access for
all to national and international cultural resources and the right
to participate therein as authors or performing artists.
3. Develop integrated policies to promote participation in cultural
life and introduce joint strategic planning across the various governmental
sectors concerned, including the ministries responsible for culture,
education, enterprise, research and digital technology, together
with those responsible for youth and equal opportunities. Involve
in the task of designing and executing these policies regional and
local authorities, according to their powers and responsibilities
in the relevant areas.
4. Stabilise the implementation of government policies in the
cultural sphere by ensuring the long-term viability of tried and
tested projects. This is so that, with the changes of political
power that are an inherent feature of any liberal democracy, each
new government does not seek to impose its stamp, periodically jeopardising
high-quality cultural projects.
5. When framing integrated policies for cultural democratisation,
take into consideration the paralysing effect of multiple sources
of discrimination (such as economic circumstances, where people
live, social status, problems arising from various disabilities,
but also the specific situation of young people) in order to identify
the types of support required so that participation in cultural
life can be tailored to these specific contexts.
6. Make the obligation to achieve results in terms of cultural
democratisation, with frequent interaction between operators, central
to the mission of every public institution that contributes to cultural
activity, education and mediation.
7. Create networks of public and private cultural operators to
enable them to share experiences and develop partnerships, whilst
pooling resources. Consider the transfrontier aspect of cultural
initiatives, with joint projects with various countries.
8. Make public funding to private cultural operators conditional
upon their contribution to cultural democratisation and to cultural
partnerships. Encourage, through fiscal measures, any forms of sponsorship that
support democratic approaches to culture and assistance in setting
up other private cultural institutions.
9. Update and significantly expand the mediation role played
by the major cultural institutions and place the following at the
heart of their programmes:
9.1. the
practice of tailoring mediation to particular target groups (the
young, the elderly, disadvantaged groups or people who stay away
from cultural resources), whilst avoiding focusing purely on one-off
activities whose sole purpose is to occasionally attract as many
people as possible to cultural places;
9.2. the development of “participatory projects” where members
of the public are invited to participate directly in the creative
process within workshops, in order to involve them personally in
artistic practice;
9.3. the use of information and communication technologies
(screens, Internet, virtual reality and augmented reality, etc.)
for multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary projects with user-friendly
environments that are likely to encourage active participation by
the public.
10. Rethink the role of the school as an institution essential
for arts education and cultural development, as a place for teaching
the skills needed to make the right to take part in cultural life
both effective and attractive, and as a place of freedom of artistic
expression and extensive contact between pupils and cultural works,
with artists, in artistic institutions or theatres and concert halls.
11. Better integrate a mandatory course on artistic and cultural
practices in national education systems. Encourage practices that
seek to foster creativity and sensitivity and that emphasise the
link between the cultural life of the region and the education system.
12. Provide induction courses in the arts for all student teachers,
thereby helping to remove the barriers between traditional teaching,
by highlighting the artistic dimension of all subjects: for example,
the various pictorial representations of relief in geography, sculptors’
mobiles as an application of the laws of physics and history of
art to accompany the teaching of historical events. Obviously, learning
to read, write and count is essential; learning to see, hear and
feel is equally essential.
13. Extend the pedagogical methods used in arts education to other
subjects by introducing interactive dialogue with pupils, and taking
care to let them speak so that they can ask questions and explain
their own individual actions as pupils.
14. Support projects that aim to establish within schools places
for artistic creation that allow contact between pupils, cultural
works and artists, and afford pupils an opportunity to learn about
free expression and artistic creation.
15. Encourage the development of amateur pursuits in extracurricular
and out-of-school settings, taking care to offer options open to
a range of choices, tailored to different groups of people.
16. Draw on local non-profit networks, with facilities for fostering
new talent with the support of skilled professionals, thereby enabling
people to discover their own previously overlooked talents. In particular,
give young people access to spaces for creative work, allowing them
every freedom to pursue their activities or develop their projects,
drawing on youth organisations, and encourage them to pool their
resources and share their creativity by forming networks with other
associations in order to devise joint projects.
17. Support, in particular financially through multi-annual objective-setting
contracts, cultural associations that provide opportunities for
local cultural mediation for young people but also for people of
every generation.
18. Encourage cultural and artistic expression which, through
a critical view on political, social, economic and cultural conditions
of today’s society, contributes to the development of critical thinking
and to reinforcing democratic citizenship. Encourage public access
to these expressions.
19. Take firmly into account the new forms of creative activity
and ways of disseminating artistic and cultural content that the
technological revolution has made possible, by abolishing geographical
and temporal boundaries, and by creating an essential space for
freedom of expression and sharing. The idea is also to encourage
the emergence of, and to adopt, new ways of consuming and creating
culture made possible by new technologies, particularly when it
comes to reaching young audiences.
20. Promote multi-disciplinary creations designed via and for
the Internet (for example Net Art) combining several modes of expression
and which use interactive digital technologies as a means of creation.
21. Ensure that there is a system in place to protect creative
endeavour, not least in order to give effect to the intellectual
property rights that are part of human rights, thus making a career
in the arts an economically viable option for young creators. The
digital revolution has brought drastic changes with positive effects
on cultural democratisation, but it has also seen the emergence
of large-scale pirating of cultural works, posing a serious threat
to future creative work. If everyone is to be able to take part
in cultural life, ways need to be found of addressing this harmful
phenomenon for the sustainability of cultural diversity.
22. For cultural development strategies to succeed in promoting
participation in cultural life and provide support for creative
endeavour, make use of the following principles of interconnection
and factors for mutual enhancement: the inter-artistic and the intercultural,
the interspatial, the inter-temporal and the inter-institutional.
II. Specific guidelines concerning the use of the principles of interconnection
Inter-artistic and intercultural
1. Together with a thorough understanding of each artistic
discipline, develop an approach to arts education and training that
emphasises connections between the arts, not only so that everyone
can acquire a comprehensive grasp of the multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary
forms of artistic expression but also so that each discipline can
benefit from other artistic approaches.
2. Promote arts education projects which emphasise interaction
between the arts, between the arts and other fields, and between
artists and the public. For example, artistic activities that create
connections between plastic arts, music, sound and light arts and
a creative dialogue with the public through new communication technologies
in areas not dedicated to the arts (for example, industrial wastelands,
areas in social housing estates for street arts).
3. Provide more sustained ongoing political and economic support,
with multi-annual contracts setting out aims for theatres and concert
halls, exhibition centres and companies of performing and visual
artists, as these provide opportunities for contact between all
sectors of the arts and, through them, between all the cultural sectors.
They also help to bring together and actively involve a variety
of young people, amateur and professional artists.
Inter-spatial and digital arts
4. Promote creations produced with local residents (participatory
forms) and initiatives where the encounter between the arts and
people comes to life in settings capable of linking artistic, philosophical
and environmental thinking, thus giving real meaning to their citizenship:
redevelop existing covered public spaces (such as railway stations)
or open-air public spaces (such as parks) in order to turn them
into places of creative participation for local residents.
5. Encourage local cultural initiatives that seek the cultural,
historical, social and economic promotion of a given area, through
ties between creators, the public and the various professionals
involved in these initiatives.
6. Implement national programmes to digitise the cultural heritage,
one of the goals adopted by the European Commission when developing
Europeana, which provides multilingual access to the full range
of cultural heritage and contemporary cultural content.
7. Connect virtual spaces to public spaces and support ground-breaking
digital services projects with in situ facilities
(3D, augmented reality, immersive virtual reality systems, mobile
phones, podcasts, etc.) or web-based facilities that can be accessed
remotely (virtual visits, thematic routes, online services).
8. Make use of the new methods of disseminating virtual cultural
content, by transferring for example visual arts to virtual galleries
and museums where works could be displayed in online exhibitions.
9. Adopt a policy of supporting innovative cultural digital services
in order to facilitate experimentation with new uses for digital
technology and encourage new partnerships between cultural operators
and the business community and private and/or public research institutions.
Inter-temporal aspect
10. Revive traditional local skills, sources and examples
of artistic creation of former generations.
11. Work with “collective memory” artists (for instance archaeologists)
and, conversely, construct a vision of the urban environment of
the future that one wishes to pass on (prospective art).
12. Encourage initiatives that create a long-term territorial
dynamic (festivals, celebrations, theme days).
13. Promote activities related to the collective memory and also
develop along these lines the role of museum institutions, theatres
and concert halls (heritage works, artists from previous centuries
and classical theatre, for example), thereby highlighting the heritage
and enabling young people to familiarise themselves with their own
national culture and that of other countries.
Inter-institutional
14. Encourage the setting up of co-ordination bodies
to ensure that cultural policy and education policy are mutually
supportive, with permanent committees of professionals that can
be renewed at regular intervals.
15. Build closer links between schools and local and national
cultural institutions, not only in order to facilitate pupils’ access
to these institutions, but also in order to bring the skills and
experience of these institutions and their staff to arts teaching
in schools, for all pupils and from a very early age.
16. Encourage inter-institutional partnerships (between national
governmental authorities, and between national and local authorities)
and public–private partnerships, right from the strategy development
stage, for designing projects and planning, in order to ensure the
highest possible level of co-ordination and interaction.