Today, cultural institutions are under pressure to rethink their civic role in a world marked by polycrisis, polarisation and inequality. The increasing mistrust towards institutions has also produced a growing appetite for accountability, participatory governance and citizen voices (Strauss, 2022), showing that what needed questioning was not the relevance of museums but their way of connecting with communities.

At the international level, we have witnessed a rise in interest towards citizen-centred, place-based policymaking, particularly in the UK, Europe and the US (Durrer, 2023). While the mechanisms are shaped by the place-specificity of each policy context, the uniting principles underpinning this interest are supporting social cohesion, reinforcing democracy and creating conditions for belonging.

In this policy brief, I focus on how the term ‘cultural citizenship’ (CC) has been operationalised in policy ¹ and how museums can support CC practices through evidence-based insights. An inquiry into the civic role of arts organisations, led by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 2019, found that ‘there is far less in the literature that presents policymakers with instructions on how best to foster the conditions in which arts organisations may better develop their civic role’ (Doeser, 2019, p.24). This brief offers such ‘instructions’ by drawing on a robust, cross-cultural evidence base grounded in place-based strategies across ten international art organisations (Figure 2).

The brief also builds on postdoctoral research concerning the civic role of cultural institutions and public culture more broadly, the growing interest in ‘place’ and ‘the local’ as policy priorities, and the responsibility of culture and cultural production in diverse societies. ² It offers a guide for funders and cultural leaders who want to support cultural organisations in navigating their role in the current political climate and their political responsibility as democratic spaces.

As a societal concern, the relationship between culture and citizenship is longstanding. In museum practice, this can be traced back to the French Revolution, when the royal collections were made public, and the very first ‘public’ museum was created. As an academic concept, CC emerged in the 1990s within debates on belonging (Ong, 1996), recognition (Pakulski, 1997) and minority cultural rights (Rosaldo, 1994), and has been productive across disciplines and geographies ever since.

The Museum Studies literature focuses on how the museum can equip communities with competencies to participate in civic cultural life (Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt and Runnel, 2018), construct identities (Dahlgren and Hermes, 2015) and express themselves (Kuttner, 2015). However, the mechanisms through which CC can be enacted remain largely unexplored and the articulation of CC disconnected from its theoretical lineages.

Here, cultural citizenship in museums is intended as ‘post-national forms of political belonging and agency over one’s spatial-cultural context through situated and collective cultural practices” (Gigante, 2024a, p.16). That is, the ability to redesign the boundaries of political belonging, to challenge borders and norms and co-creating our surroundings by coming together through culture and arts.

Citizen’s juries, panels and assemblies, such as the Voice Assembly at New Art Exchange (Nottingham, UK), are perhaps the most notable example of a trend in museum practice that has been operating in this sense, pushing the discourse of participation beyond access, engagement and co-creation, and edging into genuine partnership and citizen control (Gigante, 2024b; Jancovich et al., 2024).

This policy brief suggests that CC provides useful language to understand and support the political contribution of museum work in contemporary democracies.

In policy discourse, the phrase ‘cultural citizenship’ has featured since the early 2000s, to denote the cultural dimension of formal citizenship, with a focus on how governmental bodies could facilitate CC processes. As such, policy was concerned with identifying indicators to mark the quantifiable aspects of CC.

In the European context, CC featured as one of the four dimensions of citizenship in the Council of Europe’s report on “Education for Democratic Citizenship” (Veldhuis, 1997). Here, CC was instrumental in the full exercise of political citizenship and identified with a set of competencies (cultural awareness, knowledge of heritage and history, literacy skills) that would enable citizens to engage in a democratic society.

Northern European countries such as the Netherlands (Raad voor Cultuur, 2007) have also operationalised CC in their policy in an attempt to navigate the complexities of postmigrant societies, where the boundaries of defining citizenship through culture become a terrain of negotiation.

Notable is also the work of British scholar Mercer (2005) in creating a policy framework for CC that included qualitative indicators such as 1) cultural vitality, diversity and conviviality, 2) cultural access, participation, and consumption, 3) culture, lifestyle and identity, 4) ethics and governance.

European experiments with cultural citizenship clearly show the tensions and potential of the concept, particularly between exclusionary and emancipatory approaches. On the one hand, CC carries normative connotations when mapped onto legal membership in a nation-state (what makes a “good” cultural citizen are specific cultural competencies). On the other, it can signify the power of culture to redesign the politics of belonging.

In recent European cultural policy, CC has been linked to a more explicit effort to platform people-centred approaches to participation in culture and meaning-making – a process that has been in part expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic, which foregrounded the role played by local communities within the cultural sector.

The 2020 Rome Charter (UCLG, 2020) identifies five cultural capabilities for equitable CC: the opportunity to explore cultural roots, the right to free cultural expression, the ability to share cultures, enjoy spaces and resources, and protect common cultural resources.

This renewed engagement with CC language in European cultural policy signals a shift, as illustrated below (Figure 1).

Beyond Europe, a more politicised use of CC can be found in the Australian context, where the term has been employed to support cultural diversity and value the forms of cultural capital that community members acquire through cultural production, the forms of capital needed to access cultural production and how these are leveraged to make claims of cultural citizenship (Khan et al., 2017). Here, CC considers how culture shapes practices of citizenship and opens up spaces for those excluded from formal membership. ³

Despite efforts to activate CC, policy documents often seem to dim its radical potential by:

reducing it to a set of competencies and defining it in terms so vague that operationalisation becomes difficult;

Next, the policy brief provides insights and recommendations to cultivate CC through place-based public programming, based on an original tripartite framework that recognises the three fundamental spheres of such work, namely spatial, relational and political. In doing so, this policy brief addresses the gap between theory, practice and policy implementation by integrating a refreshed understanding of the concept, practice-based knowledge and applicable suggestions for practitioners and funders.

In what follows, I draw on original qualitative research conducted between 2021 and 2022 across ten art organisations in the UK, Southern Europe and the Americas (Figure 2), alongside subsequent research on the role of culture in place-based policy and practice. ⁴

The research involved twenty-one interviews with museum directors and public programmers across education, outreach and engagement departments, and investigated ‘public programmes’ as social process rather than curatorial practice. Of particular interest were place-based, public-facing practices delivered mainly in person through participatory formats.

These exemplars serve to ground CC in emancipatory practice and explore the political potential of situated cultural practices in museums.

In doing so, I aim to overcome the gap between policy formulation at national and supranational levels and implementation at the hyperlocal level.

The research shows that PBPP in museums emerge as strategic sites of CC, providing a space for democratic innovation through situated, collective cultural practice (Gigante, 2024a).

Despite being an under-researched and underrated area of museum practice, public programming is the public forum where “art, scholarship and education intersect with people, equity, inclusion and social justice” (Szántó, 2020, p.250). While literature on participatory (Simon, 2010) and situated museum practice (Badovinac, 2022; Byrne, 2018) is prolific, it often focuses on education or curatorial. This policy brief addresses a gap on the transformative potential of public programmes as an ‘interstitial’ yet autonomous practice that integrates different aspects of institutional work.

Evidence suggests that:

Operating at the intersection of departments and straddling the inside and outside of museums, PBPP bring together communities of cultural citizens within and around them through collective practice. As such, they can promote collective action and belonging.

Effective strategies of CC are articulated through spatial, relational and political spheres that build on each other and are equally crucial (Gigante 2024a).

The spatial sphere concerns the physical environments where activities are carried out (in the gallery or other locations in the neighbourhood) and the symbolic meanings attached to them. The relational sphere captures the inherently collective and interpersonal nature of place-based cultural practice. The political sphere is about understanding the power dynamics of cultural production in place, from deciding whose voices are heard to what structures of solidarity can be implemented.

Evidence suggests that:

This is often not captured in policy documents, which treat CC as an abstract concept, but this tripartite framework is useful for translating those principles of participation and social cohesion into practice. For example, through conversations with the community members (relational) it might become evident that a particular community in the neighbourhood is facing a particular issue (spatial) whereby this will need the activation of specific structures of solidarity (political).

Relational infrastructure is essential to practices of CC.

This includes relationships within departments or areas of practice (crucially curatorial, learning and engagement), relationships with communities, and cross-sector partnerships. However, the research revealed structural fragilities associated with the relational dimension (Gigante, 2024a).

Evidence suggests that:

Despite being considered ‘soft’, relational infrastructure is what sustains institutions by providing them with relevance and legitimacy. It is not a nice-to have but an essential component of healthy, interconnected institutions that not only operate and exist in place, but in that place are situated.

The cross-cultural evidence base gathered by surveying PBPP strategies across ten international exemplars informed a Model for Progressive Cultural Citizenship Praxis (Figure 3) which brings together the spatial, relational and political spheres and can be used as a tool by cultural leaders to interrogate their existing programming and guide the design of new programming. What follows addresses the gap identified in the Gulbenkian report (Doeser, 2019) at the beginning of this brief and offers applicable ‘instructions’ on the conditions that help CC praxis thrive both in practice and policy.

PBPP are instrumental in fostering CC in museums.

PBPP emerge as a strategic means by which cultural citizenship can be fostered in museums, not as practices in aid of curatorial strategies, but as the first entry point for local communities. This is a governance issue that calls for a rethinking of the hierarchies of knowledge production. With a growing interest in accountable and participatory institutions, PBPP strategies offer museums mechanisms to deliver on their civic and democratic aspirations.

To cultural organisations:

Foster cross-departmental interactions and integrate PBPP across museum’s operations,

To funders:

Reframe funding criteria that embrace open-ended outcomes and evaluation frameworks that capture a different, deeper way of working with communities that accounts for impact as depth instead of spread (e.g. longevity over numbers, incremental meaningful change over novelty, deepening relationships over constantly reaching new groups),

Spatial, relational and political spheres are equally crucial to the success of CC strategies in museums.

Cultural citizenship praxis is most effective when projects can articulate their relevance to place, are supported by relational work and aim to improve the everyday lives of local communities through solidarity and collective action. For example, if the project has strong local relevance but time and resources have not been devoted to building relational connections, local buy-in might be limited. On the other hand, if a relationship has been established and local communities have been invited to voice their needs and concerns, but there is no accountability and commitment to act on them, the relationship might be damaged, and with it, the trust. Ultimately, the lens of place is what holds these practices together and provides the groundwork on which to build.

To cultural organisations:

Tend to all spheres equally, from place sensitivity to people-centred approaches and political responsibility towards communities,

The relational infrastructure is at the same time the most fragile and the strongest pillar of CC practice.

From an institutional perspective, relational infrastructures are the most invisible and vulnerable to change and staff turnover. Not only do local knowledge and trust-building reside with staff directly involved in place-based practice, but they are also shaped and dependent on the individual values, vision, and sensitivity of the postholders. This carries both potential and risks. On the one hand, the relational labour of place-based, community-oriented work is fuelled by passionate individuals and community relationships flourish as a result; on the other, this makes it challenging to sustain and transfer.

Further, a piecemeal approach to funding and programming poses a serious threat to the careful, slow, and deep work required to build trust and rapport with communities (Courage et al., 2025). Long-term visions are impaired when funding is secured through short-term grants, and relationship-building is difficult when presence and commitment cannot be guaranteed to communities upfront. When museums are already struggling to overcome mistrust from local communities, project-based engagement risks causing more harm than good.

To cultural organisations:

Support relational infrastructures to protect them during institutional changes such as staff turnover (e.g. archival systems for community contacts, see Gigante, 2024a, p.165),

To funders:

Design funding cycles to ensure co-production is supported with continuity,

As we observe incremental shifts towards participatory governance in cultural institutions, cross-sector exchanges will be crucial to help museums thrive as situated institutions and design place-based policy that sustains them and fosters the conditions for democratic innovation.

The challenge is not only to recognise the value of relational labour and potential for social cohesion within public programming, but to equip it with adequate infrastructure through funding models that value long-term commitment to communities, evaluation frameworks that go beyond quantitative metrics, and institutional practice that makes space for slowness and care.

Cultural citizenship is one of those phrases that will not cease to spark debate and inspire new visions as we continue to advocate for the power of culture and its role in democratic societies. Drawing on a robust evidence base, this policy brief outlines how museums can foster citizen-led cultural practice and how, in doing so, they become sites of progressive cultural citizenship. This work requires a great deal of risk-taking and a willingness to embrace complexity, reflexivity and collective leadership, because it is also a work that cannot be done in isolation.