Creative contributions: The role of the arts and the cultural sector in development

摘要

The cultural sector is currently being touted as an undervalued contributor to development, able to support economic growth, while promoting social inclusion and cultural diversity. Targeted arts and culture funds now support artists' initiatives throughout the developing world. This article describes the trajectory through which the arts have come to be valued by the development community. It draws out diverse conceptualizations of the social value of the arts and describes some of the tensions that exist in this emerging sub-field of development practice - tensions that arise from trying to support the creative worlds of artists through the technical (and often instrumental) matrices of development.