*** apologies for cross-posting***

 

RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2016

London, 30 August - 2 September 2016

 

Organizers:

Janet Merkel (City University London)
Friederike Landau M.A. (TU Berlin, Center for Metropolitan Studies)

 

 

2^nd Call for Papers:

Artistic Interventions: Artists as policy-makers in urban cultural policy

 

In 2009, the Toronto City Council passed the so-called Billboard Tax to support culture and arts funding for the city’s diverse cultural communities.

This additional revenue going towards the arts was the result of a decade long artist-led campaign of a movement called Beautiful City. In December 2015,

the Berlin Parliament passed a two-year budget which increases financial support for independent cultural producers for 7.5 million Euros in 2016, and

9.5 million Euros in 2017 through the provision of production grants and subvention programs for artistic production space. This increase has come out

of a persistent effort of a transdisciplinary group of Berlin-based artists called Koalition der Freien Szene, having negotiated with the

Senate Chancellery for Cultural Affairs since 2012. 

 

Such examples of political activism can be witnessed more and more in cities around the globe, since artists and arts practitioners have started to turn

against ‘Creative City’ rhetorics and politics of urban governments and neoliberal austerity agendas. However, artists are rarely considered as significant

actors in cultural policy-making processes, but are rather seen as ‘spear-carriers’ (Woodis 2012). This session aims to combine debates on arts-related

and creative activism, urban cultural policy, cultural governance and creative cities. We invite empirical and theoretical papers that elaborate the role

of artists and cultural producers in contemporary urban politics and policy-making processes.

 

Questions addressed in this panel include, but are not limited to:

§  What contribution do artists and cultural producers make to cultural policy-making in cities?

§  What are artists’ claims, demands and imaginations of how to reform cultural funding instruments? How are these ideas and criticisms taken into consideration in policy-making processes?

§  How do artists and cultural producers influence policy development and change through protesting, consulting, co-opting, bargaining and negotiating?

§  How are artists being considered as agents of change and take a role in actively shaping cultural policy?

§  How is the notion of the ‘creative city’ contested among artists and cultural producers and how is it (re)negotiated in ‘the scenes’?

§  What are (un)successful attempts of artistic interventions in cultural policy reform processes and what we can learn from them?

 

Those who would like to participate in the session should contact [log in to unmask]  or [log in to unmask] by February 5, 2016 with an abstract of around 250 words.

We will inform participants by February 16, 2016 whether their paper was accepted.

 

 

 

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Dr Janet Merkel

Lecturer in Culture and Creative Industries

City University London

School of Arts and Social Sciences

Department of Sociology

Center for Culture and the Creative Industries

Northampton Square

London EC1V OHB

 

Tel: 0044 (0)20 7040 8347

Email: [log in to unmask]

Read our department blog at http://blogs.city.ac.uk/cci/

 

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