How does practice translate to policy? Concluding remarks.

With my internship coming to an end, it is time to reflect on my findings – and to come back to the original question that has motivated me to start this project in the first place. I set out to analyze cultural activities in Bucharest from a policy perspective, and derive policy from practice. What has become of it?

When I started my research, I had only a vague idea of what would expect me. After almost three months of interviewing cultural practitioners, literature and internet research, visiting cultural spaces and participating in events, I have come closer to answering some questions, albeit not all.

One of the first things I learned, and that very quickly, was that the relationship between practice and policy in Bucharest is characterized by a gap, by which I mean that the cultural sector, the policy level and the citizens are disconnected from one another. A historical perspective is insightful to explain why. I have learned from talking to professionals involved in preparing Bucharest’s application for European Capital of Culture that the city is still dealing with the detrimental effects that the Ceausescu regime had on the life of its inhabitants. People were forcefully removed from their homes when the regime demolished thousands of houses in an attempt to remodel the city scape. Communities were destroyed, and the effects are still noticeable today – people are less eager to use public space, collaborate with each other and work on common issues, and participation in cultural offers is low. Existing cultural policies often lack the means for successful implementation. There may be no budget allocated to a strategy plan, or a change in leadership may cause previous policies to lose importance. Insufficient implementation was therefore a recurring theme in the interviews I had with cultural operators. This is why the policy level often can’t reach the actual practice in the sector, and the lack of efficacy leads to a general mistrust in policy makers. When asked for their opinions on cultural policy planning, many of the people I spoke with said something along the lines of „Yes, I respect the good work that they are doing, but I don’t believe it will have an actual impact.“

As a result, it seems to me that the relationship between practice and policy is at an impasse.

Seizing the artwork, neglecting the artist

Precarity – the uncertainty over long-term access to resources – is wide-spread in the cultural sector. Low paid or even unpaid work, excessive workloads and low institutional support for freelancers are only some of its characteristics. Even though I originally didn’t come to Bucharest to specifically study working conditions, it soon became a focus of my research – I have written about it here and here. I had been working on precarity issues and collective organizing in Berlin, too, so I was already aware of the problem, and when I started talking to professionals in the cultural sector in Bucharest, it immediately leaped into my view. While the positive effects and products of cultural production are eagerly seized (after all, it is one of the fastest growing sectors in the EU), the people producing them – artists, curators and other art workers – are not sufficiently compensated for their work. This is worrisome, and it is not limited to the cultural sphere – the shift from open-ended full time employment to flexible and less secure working arrangements (part time work, freelancing, unpaid so-called “portfolio work”) is part of the neoliberal restructuring of society. The development is merely more salient in arts and culture. It affects the independent cultural sector exceedingly, because there, most employment options are project-based and many professionals go a long way until they score a salaried position in their discipline. Typically, this path is paved with vast amounts of unpaid work necessary to build up a portfolio for oneself, while resources are scarce and qualified competitors are coming from all sides.

Calea Victoriei

In Romania in particular, this situation has been compounded by the ongoing effects of the financial crisis from which the cultural sector is only slowly recovering. But it is also aggravated by cultural policies that privilege short-term outcomes over long-term infrastructure. This seems to be a global trend, as it comes up in policy discussions all over (as exemplified by this recent article). “Hard infrastructure” (buildings, project spaces, institutions) use up a lot of money and are not deemed remunerative enough, but a question that seems to be missing in the debates is what happens to workers‘ rights and social security when people are forced to go from project to project to find employment.

A misguided definition of what counts as “work” seems to lie at the core of the problem, too. Fixing a car, writing a computer program or advising people on their tax returns is “work”. Making a painting, organizing an exhibition or producing a piece of performance art, on the other hand, ranks somewhere between passion, self-actualization and hobby. People might understand that it is a job, but a common notion is that creative workers are not doing it for the money, but for the sake of art. Many overlook the fact that precarity is not only about a lack of money, it is about social security that is attached to the money issue, but also goes beyond it (for example, freelancers might get on well on a month-to-month basis, but the lack of salaried employment prevents them from accruing enough retirement benefits). Social security – understood as a wide principle – is so fundamental that it is simply not acceptable that some people have it and some people don’t. It shouldn’t be a meritocracy, either, a reward for good or a lot of work. You shouldn’t even have to work for it. Instead, it should be the premise that everyone builds their life on.

The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Parliament Building

While we are far from a society where this is a lived reality, I believe that there are some policy measures that can reduce precarity within the given conditions. This is why I have spent a portion of my project on drafting a policy brief calling for policy makers to take anti-precarity measures into consideration. It contains facts that I gathered about precarity in the cultural sector in Romania, arguments about why policy makers should tackle the problem, as well as policy recommendations. It is the snap-shot of a work-in-progress that I hope to continue in the future, and I hope that by sharing it I can contribute to the debate.

Seizing the artwork, neglecting the artist? A call for policy makers to tackle precarity in the cultural sector [PDF]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The brief focuses on culture professionals, but since precarity does not only affect them, it seems important to think about alliances with precarious workers across sectors, too. This perspective unfortunately went beyond the scope of this project.

I’m not the first one to explore and care about this topic, too. So for everyone who wants to dig deeper into the issue, I have compiled a list of the resources that I consulted during my project (see below). But the most important resource that has informed the policy brief were the interviews I conducted with culture professionals in Bucharest.

• Françoise Bonnin (Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture New Brunswick) (2015): Recognition of the Professional Status of Artists. Research and Analytical Report on the Possibilities to be explored by the Steering Committee upon Examination of the Recommendations of the June 2013 Forum. Fredericton.
• Benjamin Stuart Rodney Farr-Wharton et al. (2015): Reducing creative labour precarity: beyond network connections. In: Management Decision 53 (4), p. 857-875. (I found the analysis a bit too individualistic, but it is an interesting study.)
• Erik Krikortz, Airi Triisberg, Minna Henriksson (2015): Art Workers. Material Conditions and Labour Struggles in Contemporary Art Practice.
• Isabell Lorey (2015): State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious. (eBook) London/New York.
• Catherine Murray, Mirjam Gollmitzer (2012): Escaping the precarity trap: a call for creative labour policy. In: International Journal of Cultural Policy 18(4), p. 419–438.
• Stefan Voicu (2013): Contemporary art workers: Precarity and alternatives in Romania. In: Radical Anthropology 7.

The websites of ArtLeaks, a collective platform committed to publicize and fight abuses of labor rights in the cultural sphere, and Cultural Workers Organize, a research project on precarity in the cultural field, each offer an extensive list of resources, too.

This list is certainly not exclusive, so feel free to share your recommendations in the comments!

#WAM16 – all about future developments in the museum world

One of the starting points for my project was and still is that policy advocates have to be on top of current developments in their fields, because if they are not, they miss out on the actual needs of operators and fail at informing and influencing policy makers wisely and effectively.

For cultural policy in the museum field, there is probably no better opportunity to stay tuned than the 2016 edition of We Are Museums on June 6th and 7th in Bucharest. This annual conference, this year co-organized by the National Network of Romanian Museums and accompanied by the first museum entrepreneurship fair, Museumrocket, brings together museum professionals from all over Europe. They are united in their will to innovate their field, and this spirit was clearly visible at the conference, that I was able to attend as a volunteer.

One of the rare moments when the conference room in the National Museum for Contemporary Art was quiet…

In which direction are museums heading?

#WAM16 speakers were quite unanimous about this. The key words (and challenges) for future developments are, according to them:

• digital technologies and media – museums going digital
• reaching out to diverse audiences
• and gamification.

Among these, what I found most thought-provoking was the first

A way out of precarity in the arts world

Precarity is more than a lack of money.

What is it like to be an independent curator in Bucharest? This was one of the main questions I had in mind when I met Olivia Niţiş, a freelance curator, art critic and teacher, for an interview. At that time I had already started to focus more extensively on infrastructure and precarity in the cultural sector, and my impression was that essentially, it all comes down to one factor: money. The financial resources available do not begin to cover the needs, and the scene definitely needs more of it. But the interview with Olivia Niţiş made me realize that a comprehensive solution to the problem is more complicated than just adding more money. Precarity is not only about a lack of money, it is also about how artists obtain access to money and under which conditions, how much non-financial support they receive, how isolated or connected they are and how certain they can be that they will continue to find employment in the future. In this post, I will summarize the interview and in doing so not only answer the first question – the working conditions of independent curators in Bucharest –, but also explore some of the dynamics sustaining precarity.

Between lifestyle and plight – how the cultural scenes in Berlin and Bucharest deal with precarity

Looking for something to do on a weekend in Berlin can be overwhelming – there is always a substantial amount of cultural events going on simultaneously, and even after living in the city for almost five years, I can’t say that I have gotten to know all cultural institutions – not even close to it. After the change, many artists and especially musicians took up residence in town because they found an abundance of empty spaces there, particularly along the former border strip. The emergence of the now infamous techno music scene, for example, was only possible due to the unique spatial and political situation of Post-Wall Berlin. Felix Denk, a journalist who did extensive research on the history of techno in the city, illustrates this very well in this interview. In subsequent years, Berlin began to capitalize on its image as a ‚creative city‘; something that many locals and activists are now weary of because it is deeply entangled with dynamics on the capitalist housing market, specifically gentrification. Today, many alternative cultural scenes that once shaped the city’s identity are being threatened by rent increases and a hostile administration. Or, as Denk put it in said interview, “the people who started the scene were eventually excluded from it.”

This is apparently different in Bucharest, where I also can’t claim I know everything after only one month, but I do think I have a hunch about what the main venues in the cultural scene are by now. In other ways, I still feel like I’m peeking through the door viewer trying to piece together an understanding of what is happening on the other side. But the more I talk to people, the more I come to the conclusion that here, infrastructure, or rather – the lack of it, is one of the most important issues, especially for the contemporary arts.

The museum sector in Romania: structural issues and first thoughts about the relationship of practice to policy

When thinking about practice and policy, one side of the relationship seems to be rather obvious; that is the impact of policy on practice. Policies set the limitations and scope for cultural projects and influence the cultural landscape on a broader scale (the number of institutions and projects and their financial backing, which type of projects are typically realized by independent actors, state-run institutions or commercial corporations etc.).

But the other way round – how the practice of cultural operators, which depends on the way they deal and innovate structural issues in the cultural sector, influences or grounds public policy decisions – is not so easy to grasp. Thus, my own understanding of it is a work-in-progress itself. The most important aspect to note here seems to be that the cultural sector is not static, but subject to constant changes – factors such as dedicated professionals pressing for innovation or an increased demand for certain cultural offers, but also more general developments like globalization or new ideational discourses in civil society can push the field into a new direction. When public authorities are confronted with a changed status quo rendering their policies incomplete, ineffective or pointless, they might put change on their agenda.

To get a better idea of these dynamics, it is an integral part of my project to learn as much about the cultural sector in Romania as possible. As far as the museum world is concerned, my first interview partner, Alexandra Zbuchea, proved to be an extremely helpful contact for exactly the kind information that I am looking for. She is a specialist in museum marketing and consults museums on their communication strategies, but she also has an academic perspective on the matter, since she is the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Management at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest. In addition to that, she is also a member of the board of the National Network of Romanian Museums.

So, on a rainy day in Bucharest, we met in a café and talked over coffee and tea. Our conversation touched on a variety of topics, some of which I will explore further in later blog posts. In this post, however, I will reflect on what I have learned from her about the current challenges Romanian museums face: legislation, structural problems, but also (and this is probably the most important part): visions for the future.

Some thoughts on breaking news: the minister of culture resigned.

One piece of news caused quite an uproar in Bucharest’s cultural scene yesterday: the Minister of Culture, Vlad Alexandrescu, resigned over a fierce dispute at the Bucharest National Opera.

He declared his resignation in a Facebook post in the afternoon, and a few hours later, a group of people held a spontaneous protest in solidarity with him in front of the government building at Piaţa Victoriei. I stopped by for a few minutes to see for myself what was going on.

At this point, I was still rather clueless about the exact happenings that had led to his decision, since my poor Romanian skills make it difficult for me to follow the local news. So, as I stood there among the 30-40 protesters holding signs with the slogan “I ❤ Vlad“.

One of them told me that the conflict at the National Opera had been caused by the staff there being “nationalistic and narrow-minded”. Another person explained that ballet dancers had complained about a disparity of wages between them and the artistic director, and that this had been the main root of the conflict. But for a minister of culture to resign over something like this? Leaving the protest, I still had the feeling that I was missing the big picture.

But apparently, and luckily in my case, the scandal at the Bucharest National Opera was so big that it even made it into newspapers as far away as the New York Times, and other English-speaking sources like the Guardian and the Romania-Insider.

Piece by piece, I finally worked myself towards a better understanding of what had happened, and I will summarize it for non-Bucharest-based readers:

Knowing your audience

A study conducted by the National Institute for Research and Cultural Formation at the request of ARCUB – The Cultural Centre of Bucharest Municipality provides insight into the cultural consumption patterns in Bucharest: It shows, among other findings, that 8 out of 10 inhabitants of Bucharest attend a cultural event at least once a year. The number of people who attend such events more regularly, though, lies at 2 out of 10. These numbers seem to be fairly low to me.

Unfortunately, the summary I have linked to doesn’t mention museums – I will have to look into that. But a conversation I recently had with a friend living in Bucharest gave me an impression. Her immediate reaction to my question, do you visit museums?, was: Oh, that is not my cup of tea, I can do that when I am older…

I, of course, strongly disagree. The question is, however, what kind of image do museums have and what kind of audience do they attract?

Audience research, it appears to me, can answer these questions. This field of research is, also, an interesting link between cultural memory studies, cultural policy and cultural practice.

Just going – the Gallery Weekend

Since the approach to my project is practice-oriented – I’m trying to get to know the cultural scene in Bucharest and derive an understanding for policy needs from that – I need to get closer to what is actually going on. So when there is a cultural event, one way of doing that is, very obviously: I just go.

That is exactly what I did last Saturday during the Gallery Weekend in Bucharest. The concept was simple: with a map in hand, you walked around town and visited galleries for free. The first thing I observed was just how many galleries there were – the map was extensive! In the end, I was only able to cover four of them. The spaces weren’t crowded – often, there were only three or four other people with me in the mostly smaller exhibitions. But considering that there were so many offers simultaneously and that I saw several people walking on the street with the same map in their hands, the interest in these types of events seems to be big. I’ve learned that this information is important from a public policy perspective: You need to know the audience for specific cultural activities.

I was especially impressed by the exhibition Atena adjusting her sandal, shown at ODD. It was a feminist video installation. In Berlin, this wouldn’t be a big thing – the feminist scene there is fairly large and active, and also quite institutionalized, from political parties to NGOs to public foundations. Here, the feminist movement is a new phenomenon that only really started after the change in 1989, and the scene in Bucharest consists of 20-30 people, as far as I have heard. Thus, it was especially nice to see a feminist artwork represented in the event.

The two sides of diversity

When I heard that on April 13^th and 14^th, M.A.I.E., an educational NGO, organized a conference about diversity and new minorities¹ in Bucharest, I was immediately interested because ‚diversity‘ has long been a topic for me at home, too: Berlin often presents itself, particularly to the outside world, as a ‚multicultural‘ city and thus capitalizes on diversity, while the actual struggles of old and new minorities for recognition and equal access to resources can only be overlooked when you live in the affluent – and predominantly white – outer districts in the south of town. In the past years Berlin has seen refugees building a protest camp on Oranienplatz (a central square in Berlin-Kreuzberg) and, as the numbers of newcomers grew, hundreds of them were standing in line for an appointment at the registration authority for days in the bitter cold.

‚Diversity‘, that’s what I learned also simply by being a feminist – is a double-edged sword: It can be understood as a tool to achieve more equality in a society where individuals are subjected to a system of hierarchical differences, but it can also be the mere adding of ‚colorful spots‘ to the otherwise ’neutral‘ canvas of a city – and in the latter case, inequalities tend to persist.

So, I was interested in how the topic was discussed in Bucharest and, in fact, I found both understandings of diversity at the conference.