ABSTRACT
In the fifty years since cultural policy was conceived, the three fundamental challenges that prompted its development have retained their salience. Culture continues to be conceived as threatened, underdeveloped, and unequally distributed, and continues to be understood as demanding intentional and coordinated government action to address those challenges. In other words, culture continues to be viewed as being in need of cultural policy. The goals associated with those three challenges continue to be relevant as well. General notions about cultural stewardship, development, and access together form a bottom-line understanding of what it is that cultural policies should be working to achieve. However, the more specific character of those challenges and ideas about how best to address them have changed over time, in step with cultural and political change. Concepts and priorities established at the Council of Europe and particularly through the COE program of national cultural policy reviews gave direction to those shifts. The early national reviews, begun with a review of French cultural policy in 1987 and strongly influenced by French concerns, prioritized creativity, decentralization, and participation. Those priorities, now more than three decades old, continue to influence contemporary cultural policy goals even while they are infused by a new wave of ideas about culture and emerging political trends.
