Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Bottom-up approaches in cultural policies can be a tool to substantially support new innovative forms of cultural production and rethink the role of the arts in cultural policy making. The paper discusses the hypothesis that cultural policy should take innovative artistic practice as the starting point for innovation processes. This can be framed under the terminology of bottom-up cultural policies emerging from civil society actors and their cultural productions, e.g. not thinking from or reforming excising policies but develop entirely new cultural policies out of the not yet existing, driven by research and field data on specific innovative artistic practices. Methodologically the study addresses this topic by taking the case study of the international art exhibition documenta fifteen in Kassel (June to September 2022) and analyses examples identified as innovative forms of cultural production. Practice research has been implemented within the framework of a Summer School at documenta fifteen for students and young professionals conducted in September 2022. The paper takes this cultural platform as a laboratory to explore to what extent and how the specific artistic practices can serve as bottom-up approaches in cultural policies. Tangible examples regarding narratives, content and priorities as well as funding schemes in strategic bottom-up cultural policies are analysed and presented.