Entering Volume 2 Number 2 of the international journal Culture: Policy, Management, and Entrepreneurship, we have received numerous feedback from the cultural public sphere. Echoing our last special issue on “Cultural Sustainability: Can ‘Cultural Impact’ be Measured?” in May 2023, the Taiwan Association of Cultural Policy Studies (TACPS) in collaboration with think tanks in Taiwan have convened four expert forums on Taiwan’s cultural policy and governance in September 2023. On this basis, TACPS announces its “Cultural Petition to the 2024 Presidential Election: The Sustainability of Culture and Democratic Governance in Taiwan”1 and advocate the five substantive cultural policy strategies to the future leaders in Taiwan. These include: A. Cultural Sustainability and Democratic Governance; B. Sustainability of Cultural Economy and Value Cycle; C. Cultural Assets and Spatial Redevelopment for Sustainability; D. Cultural Technology and Cultural Communication Sustainability; and E. Improving Conditions of Artistic Labor and Local Economic Sustainability. The Petition resonates the World Culture Declaration of the Mondiacult gathering in Mexico in October 2022, and emphasizes that culture is a “public good” in Taiwan. Its public value and impact should not be underestimated in the 21st century.
In this awake, the president candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party Lai Chingte in Taiwan has published his cultural policy, entitled “Cultural Sustainability, Taiwan to the World” in Oct 2023; whilst Hou Yu-Ih, the Nationalist Party president candidate, has also proposed “Reconstructing Chinese Culture Center” as the policy direction. To our regret, apart from news reports and press releases from the political leaders, there is not much discussion, dialogues, or debates in Taiwan’s cultural public forums.
To this end, the journal Culture: Policy, Management, and Entrepreneurship will continue to compile the discussion of the four expert forums held in September 2023. We will trace the context of the above-mentioned five major cultural policy strategies that are raised by the civil organizations and publish the forum transcripts in the online journal between March and May 2024. Through the listed debates in above areas, the journal would like to invite contributors in all walks to submit research articles and policy reviews so as to enrich the varied voices and critical dialogues in the cultural public sphere.
Taiwan’s cultural policy ecology requires concrete commitments of substantive policy measures, new legislations (or legal amendments), establishment of organizations, professional human and budget resource, as well as evidence-based decision-making and impact assessment, so that the environment can be changed gradually. The actors in the cultural policy research community, government bodies, art-cultural circles, business circles, and critical intellectuals should shoulder the public responsibility of communication, collaboration, reflection, criticism, and supervision of cultural public affairs, so that Taiwan’s cultural public sphere (as a significant part of the Global South) will become more mature.
In Volume 2 Number 2, three academic research articles, one case report, one exchibition review, and one policy review are accepted. The six articles adhere to the axis of cultural sustainability and cultural impact of the previous two issues, on the one hand, and they also open up new directions in the study of cultural values and cultural public sphere. In the first research article LIN Kuan-Wen takes the creative production of opening ceremony at 2017 Universiade in Taipei as a case study, to explore the intangible legacy and culture value of events. Through interviews of key stakeholders in the event, including government officers, consultants, creative directors, designers, choreographers, arts managers and performers, the author analyzes issues on inter-generational conflict, hierarchical position within social stratification and the availability of resources in 2017 Universiade. Lin argues mega events, as a platform to facilitate cultural democratization and communication in the public sphere, may play a role to mitigate the intergenerational conflict.
Liao Hsueh-Min looks into the roles and values of Zimeiti (“we-media” or “citizenmedia”) in Taiwanese independent music sectors network, such as informational intermediary, promoters, value deliverers, incubators, gatekeepers, and culture shapers in the music scenes. The pro-indie media enhances the genre diversity of Taiwanese independent music. Zimeiti is considered as cohesive hubs in Taiwanese indie music networks, in which they provide industrial, social, and cultural value to the indie sectors and accelerate the development with their media specialties. These two articles deal with the complex value dialectics and intergenerational communication of culture in the public sphere from the perspectives of event management decision-making and market networks of independent music.
Gillian Wilkinson McDaniel’s paper takes on the issue of SDGs data poverty and the coloniality in the Anglophone Caribbean countries. She points out that efforts to meet international data goals are unsustainable in the absence of a paradigm that is local and idigenized to suit the particular development pattern of the country. And implementation of statistical legislations in CARICOM countries is very often designed in an ad hocerysetup in data production and dissemination across the statistical system. The coloniality is not conducive to the development of an evidence-based policymaking in the cultural public sector. This has also reflected the two-way dilemma in the construction of a subjective cultural policy discourse for the Global South, which is encouraged by this journal.
Pinhui Chian’s case report uses the TV drama Gold Leaf as an example, to explore the value-added development of transforming the “cultural” content of the Taiwanese tea industry into “intellectual property rights.” Chian illustrates how the prop, a white porcelain test cup featured in the series, can increase its shared co-creation brand value in the creative economy through TV dramas. The paper once again emphasizes the intangible value of cultural assets of television program, and the market value that may be derived and converted from the contemporary cultural industries.
By documenting the participatory processes of Taiwanese delegates in the 2023 “Ars Electronica Festival” in Austria, Ko Hui Ching, Chien Yu Lin and Yen Jui-Chi’s exhibition review analyzes the “deliberate incompleteness” design of the festival, and how it has become the thematic feature of the festival through open dialogues in curations, exhibitions, forums, workshops and artistic works. In the policy review, Cheng An-Chi deals with the issue of shaping cultural memory and politics of remembrance literacy in Germany and Taiwan. As a researcher and practitioner, Cheng investigates into problems about how to commemorate the unjust history, and transitional justice through a book writing project. Both reviews point to the dialogue of public opinion that may be triggered by the participation of art festivals, exhibitions and cultural monuments, as well as the open construction and reconstruction of cultural public sphere, through cultural memories, and politics of remembrance literacy.
The journal is starting a new call for papers for the special issue of “Interrogating ‘Visibility’ in the Production of Heritage: Politics and Policies of Cultural Diversity and Public Memory in the 21st Century.2 ” Summary submissions should be emailed to CPME by 15 January 2024. After selection, which will be released by 15 Feb 2024, we are expecting to receive the full paper by 31 May 2024. We are looking at having the Special Issue to be published in May 2025.
- Taiwan Association of Cultural Policy Studies (TACPS).(2023). Cultural Petition to the 2024 Presidential Election: The Sustainability of Culture and Democratic Governance in Taiwantw/en/news-3/cultural-petition-2024/ (Accessed Nov. 12, 2023).
- Taiwan Association of Cultural Policy Studies (TACPS).(2023). Special Issue on “Interrogating ‘Visibility’ in the Production of Heritage: Politics and Policies of Cultural Diversity and Public Memory in the 21st Century” Calls for Papers. Taipei: TACPS. Website: https://tacps.tw/en/cpme/special-issue-visibility-in-the-production-ofheritage/ (Accessed Nov. 14, 2023).