For decades, longer even, cultural policy in Europe has been imagined as a conflict between two ideas. The first is that everyone should have access to the greatest achievements of art and culture. The second agrees, but says that everyone should also be able to contribute to culture’s creation and evolution. In the language of policy, the first is usually called cultural democratisation, while the second, which emerged a generation later and in reaction to the first, is called cultural democracy. Both have contributed to the remarkable expansion and transformation of culture in Europe (and elsewhere) since the end of the Second World War.
See the rest of this essay by François Matarasso at the link below
