“That’s not culture”?! and what prompted this session
With Edgeryders we have been working with some of these cities, doing work mainly in bridge building. One failure we’ve seen as recurrent is the inability to see culture beyond arts.
At discourse level around ECOCs, there seems to be agreement that artistic production is only one way to build new markets, audiences, or cultural economies. But in practice there is some resistance. Our argument has been: we can’t afford to not look for solutions in other directions; not when our societies are plagued with a number of highly complex issues: rise of authoritarianism, economic breakdowns, rampant social inequalities and generally a greater distance between the centre and periphery, between the establishments and newcomers. Culture is political, whether artistic or not. And a city is its citizens, all of them and their endeavors.