• Time for Cultural Mediation
  • Foreword by Carmen Mörsch
  • Foreword by Andrew Holland
• 1 What is Cultural Mediation?
  Quick Reads:
  • 1.0 Intro
  • 1.1 “Kulturvermittlung” as collective term in German-speaking regions
  • 1.2 Médiation culturelle
  • 1.3 English terminology
  • 1.4 Italian terminology
  • 1.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 1.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 2 Cultural Mediation for Whom?
  Quick Reads:
  • 2.0 Intro
  • 2.1 Target-group categories
  • 2.2 Critique of target-group thinking
  • 2.3 Other approaches to defining audiences
  • 2.4 Cultural mediation for institutional development and renewal
  • 2.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 2.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 3 What is Transmitted?
  Quick Reads:
  • 3.0 Intro
  • 3.1 Works and productions as subject-matter
  • 3.2 Artistic techniques as subject-matter
  • 3.3 Institutions as subject-matter
  • 3.4 Art as a system as subject matter
  • 3.5 Artistic processes in business
  • 3.6 Artistic processes in social, pedagogic and activist contexts
  • 3.7 Learning methods as subject-matter
  • 3.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 3.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 4 How is Cultural Mediation Carried Out?
  Quick Reads:
  • 4.0 Intro
  • 4.1 Participation level: receptive
  • 4.2 Participation level: interactive
  • 4.3 Participation level: participative
  • 4.4 Participation level: collaborative
  • 4.5 Participation level: demand-based
  • 4.6 Teaching and learning concepts: instructionist
  • 4.7 Teaching and learning concepts: action-oriented
  • 4.8 Teaching and learning concepts: constructivist and social-constructivist
  • 4.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 4.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 5 What Does Cultural Mediation Do?
  Quick Reads:
  • 5.0 Intro
  • 5.1 Affirmative function of cultural mediation
  • 5.2 Reproductive function of cultural mediation
  • 5.3 Deconstructive function of cultural mediation
  • 5.4 Reformative function of cultural mediation
  • 5.5 Transformative function of cultural mediation
  • 5.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 5.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 6 Cultural Mediation: Why (Not)?
  Quick Reads:
  • 6.0 Intro
  • 6.1 Rationale: cultural mediation has an influence on the economy
  • 6.2 Rationale: cultural mediation promotes cognitive performance
  • 6.3 Rationale: Expanding cultural mediation as a matter of fiscal responsibility
  • 6.4 Rationale: Cultural mediation as an instrument for inclusion
  • 6.5 Rationale: The arts as universal educational good
  • 6.6 Rationale: Cultural mediation as means to actively contribute to shaping the arts
  • 6.7 Rationale: Cultural mediation to compensate for social injustice
  • 6.8 Objections to cultural mediation and its promotion
  • 6.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 6.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 7 Who “does” Cultural Mediation?
  Quick Reads:
  • 7.0 Intro
  • 7.1 Occupation: cultural mediator
  • 7.2 Conditions of employment in cultural mediation
  • 7.3 (Swiss) Training options and professional associations of cultural mediators
  • 7.4 Volunteer work in cultural mediation
  • 7.5 Cultural mediation as a research field
  • 7.6 Funding of cultural mediation in Switzerland
  • 7.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 7.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 8 Good Cultural Mediation?
  Quick Reads:
  • 8.0 Intro
  • 8.1 Quality in cultural mediation: current activities
  • 8.2 Critiques of quality management in cultural mediation
  • 8.3 Attempt to define a framework of criteria for evaluating cultural mediation
  • 8.4 Criteria for a primarily affirmative cultural mediation
  • 8.5 Criteria for a primarily reproductive cultural mediation
  • 8.6 Criteria for a primarily deconstructive cultural mediation
  • 8.7 Criteria for a primarily transformative cultural mediation
  • 8.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 8.RL For Reading at Leisure
• 9 Transmitting Cultural Mediation?
  Quick Reads:
  • 9.0 Intro
  • 9.1 Guiding questions for use in the documentation of cultural mediation
  • 9.2 Challenges in transmitting cultural mediation
  • 9.3 Cultural mediation in this publication
  • 9.CP Changing Perspectives
  • 9.RL For Reading at Leisure
• Service
  Case Studies:
  • SC Intro
  • SC.1 Case Study 1
  • SC.2 Case Study 2
  • Glossary
  • Resource Pool
  • Literature and Links
  • List of bookmarks
  • PDF Download
  • Bibliographic information and legal notice

List of bookmarks →

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2.4 Cultural mediation for the institution’s continuing development and renewal

Recently, there has been discussion of an enlarged role for cultural mediation. The aim is no longer (only) to expand access to cultural production to various new audiences. Now, the audiences themselves are being seen as possessors of knowledge essential to the development both of institutions and and of art-making. Seen in this light, cultural mediation becomes a forum for exchange and interaction. The roles of teacher and learner slip their moorings.

For example, the cultural mediation project with local residents proposed at the end of Text 2.3 entailed the possibility that the cultural institution would be encouraged to analyze its own local socio-economic impacts. The resulting awareness could, in turn, influence the institution’s future programming decisions and internal policies – e.g. the institution might decide to hire locally and offer special training programmes for local residents, take an active part in the debates about changes in the district or host artists who address the phenomenon of → gentrification in their work. Or, in another example, a museum might engage in mediation activities intended for → people with impaired vision or mobility and use the knowledge it acquires through them to design accessible exhibitions and select exhibition objects with the needs of those groups of users in mind.

Here we see the understanding of cultural institutions shifting towards → performativity. In this view, institutions are not static but instead are capable of continual re-creation by means of the collective influence of the sum of the actions and perspectives of everyone who does (or does not) use them and/or perform within them: from the institutions’ staff to their directors, to the various visitors and those who do not visit, the media reporting on them and the neighbours who walk right past without even seeing them. In recent years, new forms of public participation in social media have considerably encouraged this way of seeing cultural institutions.