House with a roof but no foundations was a post I wrote in 2011 regarding the initiative of the Brazilian government to give a sort of “culture stipend” to people with low income. It is a case a still frequently bring up in trainings and debates, as it never convinced me it was addressing the real issues. The questions citizens asked at the time were revealing: Can we buy video games with it? Can we pay cable TV? A lady that was interviewed at the time said she thought is was great, as she had never before “dared” to go to the municipal theatre of Rio de Janeiro (“It is so big, so beautiful”, she said, “I never dared”…). More importantly, though, there were the people who asked the difficult questions: how are we supposed to spend it? There’s no bookshop – cinema – museum – theatre where we live.
After that, I repeatedly
wrote both on culture stipends as well as on policies of free entry (see at the
end of this post). In 2013, I wrote again about the Brazilian initiative, that
had inspired similar actions from the US to Lebanon. And again in 2016,
when the Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, announced that the culture
pass (a €500-allowance announced in 2015 for every 18-year old to spend on cultural
products) was a way of fighting islamic extremism… Some years later, a
colleague who had attended a conference in Naples told me that young people
would sell their stipend in order to buy other things. The
Art Newspaper now confirms: “The programme was also overshadowed by a
prolific black market, with recipients trading their funds for mobile phones,
computers or cash.” The newspaper also mentions that, at the time the programme
was announced, 60% of the eligible young people signed up, but just before the
deadline, only 6% had found a way to spend the money. Apart from that, “most
Italian towns have no theatre, concert hall, cinema or bookshop in which to use
the pass.”
But - despite all the
evidence that these initiatives simply allow for “more of the same”, but not “diverse
- politicians love announcing free entries and culture passes; a huge step, in
their view (and in the view of many cultural professionals) towards the “democratisation
of culture”. I never doubted the importance of the financial barrier for many
people, I just never thought that culture passes-stipends-bonuses were the
answer to that.
And now, The
Art Newspaper brings us more on this. The Pass Culture was Emmanuel
Macron’s only culture policy proposal when he was elected in 2017, one reads in
the article. “The cost ballooned to €260m per year, including €50m for group
activities in schools. It became the culture ministry’s highest expense,
amounting to double the public support provided to the Musée du Louvre.” And
last April, the French President claimed that it was so successful in his
country that it should be extended across Europe.
In countries were there
are no studies and data, politicians may claim whatever they want. In France, the
culture ministry’s auditing body concluded that “It is impossible to show that
the programme has fulfilled its mission of public service by enlarging and
diversifying cultural practices.” Actually, the report, published in September,
reveals that “80% of 18-year-olds have benefited from the pass. In
two-and-a-half years, 71% of the 24 million users have bought books, with half
of those buying Mangas and comics. Overall, the system mainly benefits
teenagers from educated and wealthy families, who already have access to comic
books and movies.”
In
2011, I wrote that “It
doesn’t seem realistic to me that we continue to use the gratuity argument in
support of democracy and equality”. But we do, still in 2024. And this is a way
both for politicians and cultural professionals to ignore the real issues
regarding access to cultural participation; and our irrelevance. I am not
against culture passes, really. I am against the false arguments that support
them; I am against their dishonest objectives.
More on this blog
House
with a roof but no foundations
The
difference between ‘more’ and ‘diverse’
Discussing
values, from Brazil to Lebanon
Justin
Bieber and the fight against Islamic extremism
Government
reflections on access to culture
On free entries
To be or not to be (free on Sundays)? That is not the question
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