Stop Instrumentalizing the Arts

The piece argues cultural policy should start from why people make and consume art—to realize diverse values in social practices—rather than justify funding through tourism, jobs, or innovation metrics. It proposes making institutional space for cultural civil society and informal scenes instead of optimizing for economic 'externalities.' — This reframes arts funding debates beyond left–right capture and GDP logic, pushing governments to design plural, bottom‑up cultural ecosystems instead of metric‑driven bureaucracies.