Speaker
Description
In Norway, there are currently more than 130 operational culture houses, so-called ‘kulturhus’. Historically, these have served a range of purposes, providing important infrastructure for cultural activities and other community services. The early 2000s marked a proliferation in the demand to plan and construct new culture houses across the country, fueled by a conviction that tailor-made buildings are indispensable in the provision of cultural services and experiences. This is evident in the public expenditure, which show that billions NOK were allocated in the first decades of this century.
Yet, how important are culture houses today, when citizens increasingly turn to digital culture to satisfy their appetite for arts and entertainment? What purpose do they serve and for whom? And what motivated local governments to build them to begin with? Over the past decades, it is obvious that there has been a growing interest in how culture, and subsequently the buildings that host cultural activities, play a significant role in local and regional development, often following theories and practices emerging from Bilbao’s reverberating Guggenheim effect. While these cultural centres - many envisioned as regional landmarks - have been planned across the country, trends show that small and medium-sized cities are experiencing population decline and growth stagnation. Indeed, much points to the fact that Norwegian municipalities face an increasingly challenging set of development issues. In addition to imbalanced demographics, most municipalities grapple with vulnerable post-pandemic economies, coupled with the demands of climate change adaptation and mitigation, as well as an increasingly unpredictable geopolitical order. Most places would be hard-pressed to manage high operating costs linked to cultural centres on top of these governance tasks. To this end, the paper argues that, for better or worse, perhaps these culture houses serve as stand-in for those that govern us.
The paper seeks nevertheless to also extend the scholarship on Norwegian ‘kulturhus’ by investigating how they are used and managed within the context of cultural policies and economic realities. While the focus is on the Norwegian context, both Nordic and European outlooks are given comparative attention. Given current pressure placed on public expenditure, the culture house of the future has probably already been built — how can, and in what ways should it, stay relevant?
| Keywords | urban culture; inclusion; governance; degrowth |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
