By Ed Carroll
Cultural rights do not constitute an option. They are not open to arbitrary interpretation. Cultural rights involve the right of everyone to take part in cultural life. Cultural policy should be designed to build capacity to protect and fulfil cultural rights in a manner that ensures they are given effect. The institutional architecture and artists need to be up-skilled on what cultural rights stand for and how they can be supported and fulfilled. Their commitment to promote cultural rights and take actions that ensure their realisation should be ensured. The new Framework is build around seven pillars that addressed to various stakeholders and with clear challenges. Pillar 1 is given to the systems and structures of funding and support and how to reposition institutions to make culture accessible and active for every citizen. Pillar 2 fosters creativity and is addressed the economic sustainability of artists and young people who are the future creative’s. Pillar 3 is about heritage, language, traditions and habitats. It’s about ‘culturing’ people, place, food and land for future generations. Pillar 4 faces the challenges of tolerance and diversity in the face of problems associated with income, education and class that still define who counts when it comes to culture in Ireland. Pillar 5 calls for new forms of collaboration based on model developed by the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme. Pillar 6 puts its sight on creating opportunities for Irish creative talent to collaborate on a world stage. Pillar 7 responds to the challenges of the digital age and its implications for the way people have access to and meaningfully participate in culture especially young people. Creative Ireland, the government’s Legacy Programme for Ireland 2016, is, de facto, the first roll out of Ireland’s new cultural policy. It is a five year initiative (2017-2022) that aims to place creativity at the heart of public policy. It allows for some assessment of where cultural rights stand in Ireland. It is structured around five pillars: Enabling the creative potential of every child; Enabling creativity in every community; Investing in our creative and cultural infrastructure; Ireland, as a centre of excellence in media production; and Unifying our global reputation. The first two pillars appear, on the surface, to be the only ones holding out some promise for cultural rights.
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The first pillar gives exclusive focus to children. Minister Humphreys has responsibility in arts and cultural provision for children’s out-of-school lives. That equates to more than half-of-a-year when they are freed from their school uniforms. There are, however, surprisingly few commitments made to deliver on children’s creative potential even though we know that children thrive best outside of institutions. This has to change because children’s wellbeing and their rights are not just a matter for the school. If Creative Ireland wants to deliver for children, where cultural provision has never gone before, then we need fearless and focused out-of-school initiatives. Such initiatives must overcome the barriers, long identified by research into existing cultural provision, that give rise to cultural disadvantage and inequality. These include low family income, poverty, poor educational attainment, discrimination and class status. The Department of Education and Skills has a track record of improving performance by giving special priority to programmes for educational disadvantage and special needs groups. The Department Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs does not. In calling on the Department of Education and Skills to provide “access to tuition and participate in art, music, drama and coding” without addressing the other side of children’s lives, the policy is trying to fly with one engine. What a sole engine will deliver is not known as no details are given in the Department of Education and Skills Statement of Strategy 2016-2019. However, it is unlikely to deliver cultural rights for children. The second pillar is supposedly dedicated to communities. However, in reality, it is about local authorities as the drivers with the communities only there to be passively engaged. It states, “The Centenary Programme legacy demonstrated that local authorities are the primary instruments of community engagement and have a particular capacity for local programme delivery”. However, “the empowerment of local authorities to lead the engagement of citizens with our art and culture” begs the question, whose arts and culture? It reflects a restrictive understanding of what the right to ‘take part in cultural life’ might actually mean. This approach fails to make provision for art and culture that individuals and communities create in defining their own meaningful participation in society, created without reference to the prescriptions of any externally imposed cultural architecture or 2
provision. Cultural rights are about cultural self-determination by groups and communities. Farida Shaheed, the UN Rapporteur for Cultural Rights asserts “culture constitutes an important vehicle for communities to develop and express their humanity”. Communities achieve this as producers of culture and arts, not just as consumers. Communities as cultural producers require very different forms of support and of empowerment than is on offer in Creative Ireland. Cultural rights demand a practice of accountability of Government, not a process of engagement by Government. The participation of rights holders in cultural life requires that they are the key actors in cultural policy formation and implementation. These rights holders need to identify the tactics and strategies that could deal with the barriers to cultural participation they face. Pier Luigi Sacco characterises the major challenge facing countries like Ireland as being to shift from a culture of ‘state patronage’, to go beyond the culture of ‘creative and cultural industries’ and to imagine a ‘public culture’ that delivers meaning across generations, identities and peoples. Creative Ireland fails to meet this challenge in turning its back on cultural rights. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission must emerge as a champion for cultural rights. It has, so far, relegated such rights to the Cinderella position among human rights. Cultural rights, therefore, remain to be given effect not only by the policy maker but also by the supposed champion.
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