Dialogical Value for Cultural Organizations

Abstract

The ‘cultural system’ (Holden, 2006, Retrieved from www.demos.co.uk/publications) is underpinned by instrumental and institutional values, and this results in a ‘closed conversation’ which does not sufficiently include the public—the participants in local cultural life and the independent creative practitioners who often create such local culture. This article provides a critique of this situation and suggests that by developing more dialogical value—genuinely open conversations between cultural organizations and various local communities, as a cultural outcome in and of itself—the cultural organizations can become more responsive and innovative, greatly enhance their local cultural role, add a dynamic social infrastructural role to their remit and contribute to overcoming the democratic deficit within the cultural system as a whole.