PDF Basket
The 2018 New European Agenda for Culture and its 2025 successor, the Culture Compass for Europe, are a clear acknowledgement by the EU that culture matters for community building and shared identity.
Yet according to Susanne Janssen, professor of Sociology of Media and Culture at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, while the Agenda offered an opportunity to embed culture across policy areas such as education, social welfare and well-being, significant blind spots remained.
“It didn’t really consider culture as part of everyday life, nor did it link cultural goals more firmly to social justice, or take social and digital divides seriously,” says Janssen, coordinator of the INVENT project.
INVENT set out to explore the extent to which participation in cultural activities was open to all regardless of social, economic and geographic situation, to highlight how gaps between EU policy ambitions and lived realities might be bridged.
“Only with robust, comparable data can we know what works and design game-changing policies,” Janssen adds.
The meanings and values of culture
INVENT combined a survey of over 14 000 respondents with more than 200 interviews. These were complemented by analysis of social media content exploring cultural discussions and engagement online, and ‘experience sampling’ capturing participants’ cultural experiences in real time.
A key finding was the wide variation in understandings of ‘culture’ across the nine European countries examined.
Respondents in France and Spain tended to equate culture with cultivation or self-development, whereas those in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands framed culture as everyday habits and shared ways of life. Croatian participants strongly linked culture to arts institutions, and Serbians associated culture with good manners. In contrast, respondents in Denmark and Finland defined culture broadly in terms of human activities.
“Culture wasn’t one shared concept but a patchwork of meanings shaped by history. These differences matter because they shape who feels addressed by cultural policies, which forms of participation are recognised and supported, and how effectively policies connect to people’s daily lives,” Janssen explains.
The findings also meant that if transnational insights were to be revealed, cultural participation needed to be specified through engagement in a range of specific online and offline arts-related and everyday cultural activities, rather than treating culture as an abstract concept.
Looking at how cultural participation supports societal values, the analysis found strong but nuanced connections.
Offline cultural participation (including activities such as attending performances or museums, having creative hobbies, as well as dining out or visiting street markets) was positively associated with life satisfaction, cultural openness, political openness, trust in government and progressive-liberal values.
Digital cultural participation, including activities such as creating cultural content, streaming music or visiting online exhibitions, showed similar positive correlations, although high entertainment consumption such as online gaming and watching videos was associated with lower life satisfaction. Social media use, by contrast, was linked to lower trust and political openness, underlining how online environments can reinforce division.
“Cultural participation can open doors to tolerance, solidarity, empathy,” Janssen notes, “but it can also amplify social divisions if not supported by inclusive policies and equitable opportunities.”
Strengthen communities, not only economies
While differences in cultural participation did broadly reflect underlying social inequalities across Europe, further analysis revealed how national contexts can either reinforce or mitigate these divides.
“For example, the higher levels of cultural participation found across demographic groups in Denmark and Switzerland indicate there is more equal access to cultural life, regardless of socio-economic background. Whereas in Serbia, Croatia and Spain, the working class and those with less formal education had lower participation levels, suggesting unequal access,” explains Janssen.
Consequently, INVENT calls for more inclusive, evidence-based cultural policies that reflect the diversity of people’s lived experiences rather than one-size-fits-all approaches. It also recommends strengthening EU-wide data collection on culture, including a specific Eurobarometer on cultural participation and well-being.
“Cultural participation supports mental, emotional and social well-being. But to unlock these benefits we need more investment in community-based and everyday cultural practices, not just in big institutions and creative economies,” says Janssen.
Janssen regards the new 2025 Culture Compass for Europe as a promising step forward, as it integrates culture more clearly into EU social and digital policies, by highlighting culture’s potential for positive impact and by addressing inequalities in access.