The Therapeutic State

Kulturens roll och nytta i samhälls­utvecklingen

“…Kopplingen till samhällsutvecklingen är där ör också betydligt oklarare än vad som ofta görs gällande både i forskningen och inom den kulturpolitiska s ären. En begränsning som lyfts fram är att positiva resultat ofta bygger på subjektiva upplevelser och utsagor av personer som i olika positioner deltagit i exempelvis ett kulturprojekt (Bergh & Sloboda, 2010;Clift et al, 2021;Jermyn, 2001;Mirza, 2005).…”

“…samhälls örbättrare avleds uppmärksamheten från mer grundläggande materiella frågor. Enligt denna kritik riskerar konst-och kulturprojekt att bli en symptombehand ling i relation till olika samhällsproblem som egentligen kräver helt andra åtgärder (se t.ex Bel iore, 2006;Mirza, 2005Mirza, , 2006Clift et al, 2021)…”

Cultural Education: Redefining the Role of Museums in the 21st Century

“…The early 2000s saw a heated debate on how museums, in particular, should respond to these policies, in the context of a wider discussion about the value of the arts (Carey ; Holden ; Keaney ; Pachter and Landry ; Preziosi ). While some researchers and commentators warned against the instrumentalist agenda, particularly in relation to providing evidence of impact (Belfiore ; Brighton ; Hewison ; Merli ; Mirza ; Mirza ; Selwood ; Selwood ; Selwood ), others saw it as an opportunity to push museums and other cultural institution to the centre of programmes for social change (Bunting ; Coles ; Cowling ; Falk and Dierking ; Gibson ; Jancovich ; Matarasso ; Matarasso ; O'Neill ; Wilkinson ). Much of the sector was ambivalent about the issue, attacking quantitative measurement but concerned to find ways of demonstrating value which could replace simplistic numerical and financial indicators and reveal deeper, qualitative benefits of cultural engagement.…”

“…Levitas ) and, as Thumim () has argued, floated between ideas of democratisation and therapy in their claim to promote democratic empowerment and self‐representation. As Mirza suggests more forcefully, in New Labour cultural policy, cultural engagement tended to be seen as an essentially therapeutic process, ‘a catalyst for emotional empowerment’ (Mirza ). Tessa Jowell, as Secretary of State at DCMS (2001–2007), reflected this in describing social exclusion as a psychological condition, the ‘poverty of aspiration’, reflecting passivity and low motivation which ‘compromises all our attempts to lift people out of physical poverty’ (Jowell , 3).…”

Desde la experiencia de la gente: participación cultural en la organización de arte Faro de Oriente en la Ciudad de México

“…Criticisms of such perspectives highlight that the state-organised culture is characterised by its instrumentality and the emphasis of the powers of the arts for the socially excluded (Belfiore, 2002;Belfiore and Bennett, 2007). It has also been argued that governmental arts programmes have a "therapeutic role" to 'improve' young people (Mirza, 2005); arts practices are "technologies of creative citizenship" (Grundy and Boudreau, 2008 p. 347) and that arts programmes describe young people in "need of control from the state" (Hickey-Moody, 2013, p. 21).…”