UNESCO Expert Group

The invitation for people to become 'experts' within this programme went out earlier this year. Thirty of us were chosen out of 640 applicants. The website for the programme following the first meeting in Rabat 21st-22nd March 2011 can be found at: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/cultural-diversity/2005-convention/technical-assistance/pool-of-experts/list-of-experts/

The programme is unusual and commendably risky - or at least experimental. Rather than giving money for projects it pays for technical assistance from experts - that's us - to help develop the 'governance' of culture. Perhaps we could also call it the soft infrastructure. Over 70 developing countries can benefit - they have to be 'developing' and to be signatories to the 2005 UNESCO convention on cultural diversity.

Some of the themes that came up (for me at least) at the meeting - apart from the operational technicalities which often cloud the big picture in these programmes - were the relationship of culture to economics, and the limits of the term 'technical' when dealing with cultural governance.

The first concerns how far culture should be presented (perhaps sold!) as part of economic development rather than a 'human rights' development goal in itself. Related to this was the extent to which culture and its impacts could or should be presented in economic impact terms; how far the pragmatic attempt to do this begins to undermine other values which we might give to culture. The wider background to this was how culture and economics sit together; to what extent have these become complementary bed-fellows, or do they retain the friction and the antagonism previously associated with the liberational promise of culture. Things have certainly changed since art and industry were two distinct worlds, far-away from each other. But to my mind the smooth mutual accommodation promoted by many of the proponents of the creative economy risks loosing much that is valuable in culture. Not just that it 'reduces' culture to economics (this is often true) but also that it leaves the idea of 'economy' untouched. 'Economy' and 'economics', rather than being challenged as a historical constructs become absolute terms - like culture - with fixed boundaries and definite meanings. In fact the growing power of this foregrounding of 'the economy' is only too clear in the way culture and economics are not 'mutually accommodating', rather the latter gaining dominance over the former. Adorno might have called this 'reconciliation under duress'.

The second relates to the idea of the 'technical': it implies that there is something called 'good governance' and with technical assistance this can be spread across the globe. This makes the programme sound more patronising than it is. It is very much a client-driven process and the experts are not briefcase wielding drones helicoptered in to tell the locals what to do. The experts I met were from a great range of countries and have vast amounts of experiences in working in developing countries. Far more than I have. Its just that at some point we might have to acknowledge that this is not simply 'technical assistance' nor can it be. In trying to promote the good governance of culture we are making a political statement which we might as well acknowledge upfront. Which means that we might not only face challenges in developing countries - but also challenges in developed countries. The governments of these latter have long abandoned some of the more radical demands on culture that are alive, well and vital in many developing countries. Hopefully the experts might come back with a useful message for the rather smug metropolitan global centres of the 'developed' world.