Active Participation in European Cultural Policy

A critical reading of the Sector Blueprint and Culture Compass

#7 COUNTING CULTURE: THE SHAPE OF WHAT NUMBERS HIDE

By Giorgio Bacchiega

The Compass and the Blueprint approach evidence from different standpoints. The first draws primarily on standardised survey data, while the second grounds its proposals in the direct experience of organisations across the field. Each perspective has strengths and limits: statistical data can travel across contexts but risk flattening the specificity of what they measure; experiential knowledge captures that specificity but cannot easily be generalised beyond the settings in which it is formed. Statistical measurements are most useful when interpreted alongside hands-on experience, since what the data appear to show and what they actually capture can diverge considerably.

THE CULTURAL IDEALISATION
In addition to the conflation of receptive and active participation, a new aspect emerges in how Eurobarometer measures the importance attributed to culture in people’s lives, asking respondents to rate how important culture is to them, personally, on a scale from “very important” to “not at all important”. Such a formulation rests on the assumption that the meaning of culture is shared and stable across respondents, which is not a given. For people living in remote areas, for instance, culture may refer to the folk traditions of their village, the songs or dances performed at local celebrations, as well as other forms of everyday expression not universally recognised as “art”. When asked in abstract terms, respondents may instead think of institutional forms of high culture, such as theatres in major cities they have never visited or music they do not engage with, and respond on that basis. For urban professionals, by contrast, culture may correspond more directly to the concerts, museums, or films they can access in their everyday lives, and their response reflects that experience.

Interpretive instability produces measurable distortions when one considers that across the EU, 79% of respondents consider culture important to them personally, 87% agree that participating in cultural activities improves their emotional or physical well-being, yet only 49% have participated in artistic activities in the past year. Even considering that participation questions refer to active creation, while importance may include receptive forms, the gap suggests that many Europeans declare culture’s importance without regularly engaging in it in any form. Romania illustrates the extreme of this pattern, where the lowest importance rating in the EU (61%) coincides with the lowest level of active engagement (18%), while at the same time a large majority of respondents (81%) believe that cultural participation improves their well-being.

This gap can be read in different ways, none of which the Compass considers. Respondents may shift their understanding of culture depending on the question, moving between institutional forms and everyday practices without the survey registering the shift. They may also express aspirational values rather than lived experience, affirming that culture is important and that participation improves well-being because these are socially desirable positions, while actual engagement reflects material conditions that such questions do not capture. More broadly, culture may function as an abstraction that attracts approval in principle while remaining distant from daily life. In this sense, the gap between declared importance and actual engagement suggests that these responses may capture what political theorists describe as cheap talk: costless affirmations of value that do not translate into behavioural commitment or political demand.

THE BINARY CONUNDRUM
The participation questions partly address the interpretative dilemma by identifying specific activities such as playing a musical instrument, singing, or dancing. This specificity produces more stable data as it can be assumed that respondents throughout the Member States understand “sung” similarly. Yet the categories remain broad enough to obscure distinctions that matter for policy. What, for instance, does it mean to report having sung?

The term may encompass a wide range of expressions: from singing alone in the shower, beneficial for personal well-being but not creating community bonds, or singing along to recordings as a valuable form of active consumption, to participation in religious services, which is collective but often structured within hierarchical frameworks where participants do not often govern musical choices. It may also include informal group settings that are collective but ephemeral, as well as sustained involvement in organised choirs, which require the development of personal and social skills, coordination, shared discipline, and, often, democratic governance.

The data indicate that 15% of Europeans have sung, but do not distinguish between forms that carry fundamentally different social and political implications. The same limitation applies across activities: the 17% who have danced, and the 10% who made a film or done some photography, each cover a wide range of practices with very different meanings. This becomes particularly significant if participation is expected to contribute to well-being, social cohesion, or civic engagement, as the Compass suggests.

THE TEMPORAL COLLAPSE
A further limitation lies in the fact that the survey captures moments rather than durations. Someone who attended a single concert or sang once in the car, or at a party in the past year is counted in the same way as someone who sings weekly in a community choir, obscuring the democratic significance of cultural practice. A single episode of participation may provide personal satisfaction or a remarkable aesthetic experience but does not build sustained relationships, or skills or organisational capacity. The Commission cannot determine which pattern prevails because the questionnaire does not ask. It adopts a binary approach, whether one has participated in the past year or not, where the relevant question is how regularly, in what contexts, and with what degree of agency.

The result is not only partial knowledge, but the production of false knowledge: a stabilised understanding of participation that reflects the limits of measurement rather than the diversity of practice. When this understanding informs policy, it influences not only what is supported, but on what grounds. As practices with different implications are treated as if they contributed in the same way, their specific meanings become detached from what they actually do, placing their intrinsic value in question. How this shift operates is the next step in the analysis.

---

This series is intended as a critical yet constructive contribution to the Culture Compass debate, exploring where active participation challenges existing policy assumptions and where new frameworks may emerge. Future entries will address participation versus access, indicators and measurement, and the place of grassroots practices within European cultural ecosystems.

---

Consulta Periferie Milano is a network-centric platform (formally a second-level association of undertakings or association of associations of undertakings) formed by 36 cultural, charity, trade, visual and performing arts organisations, cultural centres and local newspapers active in the peripheries of Milan with the purpose of drawing constant attention and find original solutions to the problems of the multifaceted peripheral landscape of Milan in cooperation with academic, political and societal forces.