The Spatial Politics of Art Organisations: Public Programmes as Sites of Cultural Citizenship

At a time in history when fundamental democratic institutions and processes are in question, this thesis investigates how innovative contemporary art organisations are forming and defining new forms of participation and interconnectedness. Past research in cultural policy, museum studies and critical urban geography have all identified new phenomena in place-based, socially-engaged placemaking; this thesis re-visits the neglected concept of cultural citizenship (CC). Despite generating a significant discourse at the level of regional and global cultural policy (from the Council of Europe to UNESCO), the concept of cultural citizenship is yet to produce a comprehensive critical model of public engagement for actual cultural organisations. Principally directed at Art Museum and Gallery Studies, and formed through significant empirical research, this thesis constructs such a model. The unique aspect of this study is how it locates the most effective processes of cultural citizenship formation in public programming. Empirical research on the spatial political positionality of art organisations, their cultural praxis and tactics for community-oriented engagement investigates the medium of public programmes — in the UK, Southern Europe and the Americas. Between Spring 2021 and Autumn 2022, twenty-one semi-structured interviews with art museum professionals were conducted. Approached through an original tripartite analytical framework, the analysis yielded substantive thematic parameters for effective public programming across three spheres: the spatial, the relational and the political. These were identified within ‘spatial scales’, ‘relational modalities’ and ‘political structures’. Taken together — the empirical study, the theoretical concept and discourse of cultural citizenship — a model emerges where place-based public programming is recognised as one of the most strategic means by which art organisations become sites of cultural citizenship, that is, post-national forms of political belonging and agency over one’s spatial-cultural context through situated and collective cultural practices.