This special issue is the output of the biannual Jean Monnet project ‘EU Competences and National Cultural Policies: Critical Dialogues – CULPOL’ (September 2016 – August 2018) that was coordinated by IRMO’s Department for Culture and Communication. CULPOL aimed to promote discussion and reflection on the impact of the EU agenda on the national cultural policies and Croatian cultural policy in particular. The project was co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. This special issue brings 5 articles, 2 conference reports and 4 book reviews. Contributors include Bjarki Valtysson, Karsten Xuereb, Goran Tomka and Višnja Kisić, and Andrej Srakar.
From the Introduction by Jaka Primorac, Aleksandra Uzelac, and Paško Bilić:
“The Special Issue gathered contributions that critically addressed different issues and challenges that the European Union and national cultural policies are facing in the 21st century. (…) Contributions point to the diverse understandings of culture, as well as the complexity of the EU governance system and the discrepancy and mismatch of the national and EU levels that regulate the field of culture. The articles point to the democratic deficits of the EU governance system and EU policies, and detect the inconsistent development strategies on different policy levels. What is also traced in selected contributions is the further shift of the focus of EU policies for culture toward an economistic approach to culture that puts cultural and creative industries at its centre.”
Read it here