The EU-funded INVENT project intends to study the eventual influence exercised on European citizens by globalisation, European integration, migration waves, the digital revolution and the rise of social inequalities. The project aims to create new methodologies for the understanding of the value of culture in European societies. It will research the social and cultural premises for successful implementation of the New European Agenda for Culture. It will also identify how culture supports identity, tolerance, belonging and social cohesion.
The New EU Agenda for Culture (2018) represents an exceptionally significant step forward in European cultural policy. However, it seems to us that this remarkably important new focus of the EU on the sphere of culture is accompanied by theoretical and methodological challenges, which should be considered in the process of realizing the presented goals.
The changes which Europe and the world have undergone over the last thirty years are so drastic that they require a different approach to creating cultural policy. Our intention is to study how the way of life and cultural participation of European citizens has been influenced by the mega-trends of globalization, European integration and the migrations that accompany them, the digital revolution, and the rising social inequalities, and point out why this requires “social turn” in cultural policies. The bottom-up approach that we will use will also provide us with insight into multiple, often mutually contradictory, concepts of culture and understandings of societal values of culture among various social (demographic, socio-economic, ethnic, religious…) groups in European societies, and at the same time offer the foundation for new methodologies for capturing the societal value of culture.
The task that we have set for ourselves in this project is to identify, through research, the cultural and social preconditions required for the goals of the New EU Agenda for Culture to be realized. This is the overall goal of our project, aimed at supporting the values of culture vital for the preservation and improvement of the European project, by means of striving to promote identity and belonging, inclusiveness, tolerance, and social cohesion. We intend to identify the elements which need to be present in cultural policies both at the European and national levels, in order to aid the realization of the strategic objectives of the New EU agenda for culture.
