Cultural Policy and Diplomacy

The Baldy Working Group on Cultural Policy and Diplomacy has grown out of a need to bring together scholars to explore the many interdisciplinary facets of cultural policy and diplomacy.

As events early in February 2006 demonstrated, the power of an image can evoke international outrage. Countries not generally known to be in the forefront of the political arena such as Denmark found themselves closing embassies in countries as far away as Indonesia because of an editorial cartoon which was deemed offensive to the international Islamic Community. So too in Stockholm in 2003, the Israeli Ambassador literally pulled the plug, by disconnecting the electricity to an exhibition of Palestinian art the contents of which he found objectionable to his state. The arts and their cultural manifestations, therefore, are not all sweetness and light. On a national level in February this year a school teacher in Colorado, USA, discovered that the arts can be contentious as she was threatened with dismissal over showing a video of Gounod's Faust (1870) to a group of grade school students. Apparently Mephistopheles, a critically understood figure in the western cannon, is too dangerous a manifestation for today's sensitive young minds. The Australian economist David Throsby also raised an old question recently, asking whether “Australia really needs a Cultural Policy?” referring to that country’s cultural policy of 1992 “Creative Nation.”

What all these separate events remind us is that cultural images and cultural events are far more complicated in their immediate impact and long term effects than politicians generally understand. Whether a country has an explicit “cultural policy” or not, when the government
attempts to enlist the arts to its political ends, the result is likely to be different from, and sometimes contradictory to, official hopes. In no other part of the political arena is government action so clearly based upon pious hope rather than long-term research findings. These occurrences within a short space of time demonstrate that the questions of cultural policy and diplomacy are poignant issues within our societies but they have very different manifestations.

The Working Group on Cultural Policy and Diplomacy will seek to draw together scholars who are interested in exploring the many facets of these typically under-researched areas of study. Scholars from the fields of law, political science, arts management, sociology, urban research and cultural tourism will meet on a regular basis to exchange their scholarship and to listen to addresses by visiting speakers.

Convenor

Ruth Bereson, Director, Arts Management Program, College of Arts and Sciences
University at Buffalo, 701 Clemens Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
716.645.2435 ext 1088 bereson@buffalo.edu
http://www.artsmanagement.buffalo.edu/

Calendar for 2006-07

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Working Group Luncheon Presentation Mark Popiel, Director, UB Office of Immigration Services "Current Changes in Immigration Law"
Organized by the Cultural Policy and Diplomacy Working Group and the Migration Policy and Pluralism Working Group. Download flyer

 

Monday, November 1, 2006

Luncheon Presentation Milena Dragicevic-Sesic, Cultural Management and Theory of Mass Media, Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Belgrade "Arts Management and Cultural Policy in Turbulent Times" Download flyer

Calendar for 2005-06

Wednesday, May 3, 12:30 pm - 2:30 pm, 280 Park Hall

Presentation and discussion of a new Baldy Working Group on Cultural Policy with Ruth Bereson, UB Art History/Arts Management Program, and John Pick, Emeritus Professor, Department of Arts Policy and Management, City University, London, and former Chair of Rhetoric, Gresham College, London, on "Researching Cultural Policy and Cultural Diplomacy."
Seminar paper by Ruth Bereson on "Fats Domino is Missing. An Analysis of Arts and Cultural Policy Making in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina"
Commentators: Jim Atleson, UB Law; Kate Foster, Director, Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth. Download paper

 

 

Baldy Center For Law & Social Policy
511 O'Brian Hall, University at Buffalo Law School
Buffalo, NY 14260
716.645.2102