Cultural Rights and Digital Technology
How can digital technology become a lever for cultural emancipation rather than an instrument of dependence? I propose a digital implementation of the eight fundamental rights, to open concrete democratic pathways.
From democratization to cultural democracy
Cultural rights constitute an essential legal and philosophical framework for concretizing respect for human dignity in all its dimensions. Founded in their contemporary conception by the Fribourg Declaration in 2007, they represent much more than a simple list of principles: they embody a paradigmatic revolution in our very conception of culture and its practice. As Patrice Meyer-Bisch, the principal architect of this declaration, says, “cultural rights are not a luxury, they are the very fabric of human dignity.”
Cultural rights, which aim to respect the culture that makes each person, so that they are legitimate to recognize themselves and contribute, invite us to a radical change of perspective: moving from cultural democratization, which consists of disseminating a dominant culture to the greatest number, to cultural democracy, where each individual is recognized as a bearer and creator of culture. This transition challenges the established dogmas of the cultural sector, traditionally organized according to logics of hierarchization and institutional legitimation.
Faced with this necessary transformation, digital technology appears as an ambivalent tool. On one hand, it can reinforce mechanisms of domination and dependence; on the other, it offers unprecedented possibilities for emancipation and participation. It is this tension that I explore here, by proposing concrete pathways to put digital technology at the service of the eight fundamental cultural rights.
The myth of technological neutrality
Digital technology is never neutral. This assertion, which may seem obvious, deserves to be repeated given how persistent the illusion of technological objectivity remains. As jurist Lawrence Lessig demonstrated in his foundational work Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999), “code is law”: technical choices shape our possibilities for action and thought. Each digital tool carries within it a vision of the world, social relations, and intrinsically of culture.
“In cyberspace, code is law: the way it has been conceived and written radically determines our experience of the internet and the web, the possibility of anonymity, access to information, etc.”
The dichotomy between free and proprietary software perfectly illustrates this non-neutrality. Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement, reminds us that “with free software, users control the program, so it does what users want. With proprietary software, the program controls the users”. This distinction is not technical but profoundly political: it determines who holds power over our daily tools and, by extension, over our cultural practices and therefore our identities.
I observe with concern how we often unconsciously place ourselves under the dependence of multinationals that present themselves as universal public services. Google, Facebook, Microsoft: these companies, whose sole purpose remains profit, have succeeded in establishing themselves as indispensable infrastructures of our cultural and social life. This hegemony is not trivial: it conditions our modes of expression, creation, cultural sharing, social relations, access to information, political viewpoints, etc.
Digital sovereignty as a democratic prerequisite
The question of digital sovereignty goes far beyond technical considerations to touch the very heart of our cultural autonomy. Bernard Stiegler, in The Automatic Society (2015), warns against the “generalized proletarianization” induced by digital technologies controlled by a few dominant actors. This proletarianization concerns not only work but also our cultural know-how and ways of being.
Regaining control of digital tools thus becomes a democratic imperative. This involves conscious choices: favoring open source solutions, developing local and decentralized infrastructures, training citizens in critical understanding of the technologies they use. These decisions are not technical but profoundly cultural and political.
I advocate for an approach I would call “digital craftsmanship”: a thoughtful and conscious practice of our tools, where each technical choice is considered in terms of its cultural and social implications. This approach opposes passive consumption of pre-packaged digital services, to become conscious actors of our technological environment. This is very easy to say, because we are dependent, at the personal level and at the level of our relationships. Remember, about fifteen years ago, those who wanted to emancipate themselves from Microsoft Word, who sent .odt files made with Open Office, instead of .doc files, to their colleagues or partners, who were always asked to send them the documents in “Word version”! Because Microsoft software could not read, of course, free document formats, which were not under the grip of its monopoly. It is particularly difficult to escape such an insidious grip, lodged at the heart of our daily usage, our lives, therefore. Let’s take this into account, let’s not be simplistic.
The eight cultural rights tested by digital technology
I therefore propose a practical implementation of the eight rights from the Fribourg Declaration, each time with one or two examples of implementation via digital technology. It is about opening the field of possibilities, because digital technology has always held such democratic promises! Everything depends on how we use it, so here are some examples.
Identity and heritage: collective memory reinvented
The right to cultural identity takes on a new dimension in the digital age. When I organize an event with a group, I systematically ensure to create digital traces, photos, sounds, videos, which I deposit in a permanent and independent hosting space, to which I give them access via a QR Code that I distribute. This practice, apparently simple, has great importance: it allows participants to find and appropriate the traces of their participation, thus constituting their own identity narrative. The example of a project carried out in 2023 with Cultures du Cœur and support from the Ministry of Culture, shows how these digital archives become supports for identity symbolization. As we can see here, each participating person has their own page, which brings together their creations, which played a major role in identity recognition by themselves for these vulnerable people:
Cultural heritage, traditionally conceived as a legacy to preserve, becomes with digital technology a living and participatory process. Arjun Appadurai, in The Condition of Global Man (2013), invites us to think of heritage not as a stock but as a capacity for collective aspiration. Digital technology enables this transformation. For example, after a museum visit, I propose that participants create their own documentation via their personal photos, which will become accessible via QR codes that they themselves deposit immediately in the museum, in order to make them accessible to others. Heritage is thus mediated by their gazes, reappropriated and enriched by their singular perspectives.
This approach profoundly transforms our relationship to heritage. Rather than simple consumers of legitimate culture, individuals become co-creators of a living and plural heritage. Digital tools, correctly used, allow this democratization not of access to the culture, but of recognition of their cultures.
Diversity and participation: towards a cultural polyphony
The right to cultural diversity finds in digital technology an immense ally, provided it is used consciously. For example, I implement simple but effective devices: inviting people to write on paper their point of view on a common subject, photographing their contributions and gathering them themselves (via a QR code that I distributed to them, with an extremely simple online digital tool) in a shared digital space. This practice, which I implement very often and whose method I specified in the article Audience contributions via digital tool, creates a concrete and accessible representation of the diversity of perspectives. As Édouard Glissant so beautifully defines in his Poetics of Relation (1990), “I need all the languages of the world to speak mine”.
Cultural participation requires accessible and non-intimidating tools. I systematically bring together the simplest possible digital creation devices: microphones for recording, cameras, video cameras, electronic musical instruments, etc., which I test and choose for their greatest accessibility. The crucial issue is that these tools be usable without prior explanation, allowing voluntary and spontaneous participation. This technical accessibility is the primary condition for genuine democratic participation.
Experience shows that when technical barriers are lifted, creativity naturally expresses itself. Synthesizers, digital markers, touch interfaces become natural extensions of personal expression. Ease of use is not a technical detail but a fundamental political choice to guarantee equal access to cultural creation.
I take as an example these sound poetry workshops that I implemented at La Maison des Ailleurs in Charleville-Mézières, former residence of Arthur Rimbaud.
Cooperation and community: building together
Cooperation goes far beyond simple participation: it involves building the systems themselves together. I take the example of a citizen contribution that I organized as part of the city of Saint-Denis’s candidacy for European Capital of Culture 2028: I had set up an online collaborative space where residents could, at regular intervals, formulate political proposals. Thanks to a well-designed system of keywords and hypertext links, each contribution was enriched by previous ones, creating emergent collective intelligence. Ivan Illich, in Conviviality (1973), called for tools that “allow everyone to enrich the environment with their own visions.”
The right to community, often misunderstood, does not mean communitarianism but recognition of our multiple belongings. I discovered that discussions with ChatGPT can play a surprising role in this recognition: artificial intelligence, through its ability to dialogue on extremely specific community subjects, allows people to feel respected in their singular belongings. This initial validation creates a basis of trust to then explore other communities. We find two examples here, of traces of conversations with ChatGPT in 2023, in the social field:
And I theorized the process in the article ChatGPT as an empathetic social interlocutor.
Another idea: propose to a person passionate about cooking to photograph the stages of their culinary creations to share them in a secure and free space. Others do the same, progressively creating a community of practice. This reciprocal confidence-building, facilitated by digital technology but anchored in concrete practices, allows opening towards other cultural communities.
Education and information: distributed knowledge
The right to education, in its cultural dimension, must be radically dissociated from National Education which, despite the good will of many teachers, functions globally, as we know, as a machine of distinction and social exclusion. I speak here of popular education, that which recognizes everyone as a holder and transmitter of knowledge. Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), said that “no one educates anyone, no one educates themselves alone, people educate each other through the intermediary of the world”.
YouTube and TikTok, despite their commercial models, have become extraordinary spaces for mutual education. How many people have learned their trade by consulting YouTube channels? This massive reality forces us to rethink our conceptions of knowledge transmission.
The right to information implies voluntarily cultivating consultation of diversified sources, beyond standardized major media. We must develop what I call “informational hygiene”: going beyond Google, exploring Telegram, Twitter/X, specialized forums, etc. Not to adhere to everything, but to exercise critical thinking in the face of increasing standardization of official information. Noam Chomsky, in Manufacturing Consent (1988), masterfully demonstrated how dominant media manufacture a univocal vision of the world. And yet, he himself, during the Covid period, adhered almost unreservedly to the belief in the necessity of generalized vaccination, which was imposed without any scientific or health probity, but obtained through mass manipulation techniques that he himself had so well documented. This shows how critical thinking must always be questioned again!
Towards an emancipatory digital praxis
The implementation of cultural rights in the digital age does not belong to utopia but to a demanding daily praxis. Each choice of tool, each device implemented, each space created constitutes a political act that shapes our collective relationship to culture. This responsibility falls to all of us: cultural professionals, educators, engaged citizens.
The issue goes far beyond the technical question to touch the heart of our democratic project. As Antonio Gramsci wrote, “all men are intellectuals, but not all men exercise the function of intellectual in society”. Digital technology, correctly appropriated, can allow everyone to fully exercise this intellectual and cultural function.
I advocate for constant vigilance against the sirens of technological ease. The ready-made solutions of large commercial platforms are seductive, but they deprive us of our cultural autonomy. Building alternatives requires time, energy, perseverance, cooperation. But it is at this price that we can truly put digital technology at the service of an authentic cultural democracy, where every voice counts, where every culture is recognized, where every person can be an actor of a living cultural democracy, like what John Dewey advocated so well in The Public and its Problems (1927):
“The formation of States must be an experimental process [...] And as the conditions of action, inquiry and knowledge are constantly changing, experimentation must always be resumed; the State must always be rediscovered,”
The “cultural rights”, which derive from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are a concept developed and defended by researchers, sociologists, philosophers, political leaders and actors of the cultural world. Present in a certain number of articles of law since 2001, the cultural rights aim at highlighting and formalizing, in order to be able to make them operative, the principles of a “cultural democracy”. To summarize it quickly, it is a question of each person being able to give value to his or her personal culture, in order to be able to exercise his or her citizenship: to express himself or herself, to defend his or her point of view, to create, to develop his or her practices, to have access to a cultural diversity, etc. Cultural rights operate in a much wider field than that of the strict cultural sector.
The notion of “cultural rights” is present in France in the laws NOTRe (2015) and LCAP (2016). It is carried by a delegation of the Ministry of Culture (General Delegation for transmission, territories, since January 1, 2021).
Paradoxically, cultural rights are difficult to implement in the cultural sector, which is traditionally rather attached to “cultural democratization”: one often defends the idea of the transmission to the public of works of art of the best possible quality, according to a principle of hierarchy of “cultural values”. Thus, the cultural rights can be lived by certain professionals of the culture as a dangerous dynamics for the Art, a tendency towards the amateur practices, which is not the case.
In my point of view, which is that of a practitioner/researcher in the cultural field, cultural rights are above all a practice, an exercise of democracy in the very methods of organization of the work, of the relation to the other and of the place of each one, the choices of programming, the methods of mediation and animation of workshops, the mode of territorial inscription of the cultural policy, etc.
I propose in this section concrete working methods for good practices of implementation of cultural rights, based on my field experiences, as well as a sharing of more theoretical reflections, in the framework of my own research on cultural rights.
I place myself in the filiation of thinkers like John Dewey. But cultural rights cannot be presented without mentioning Patrice Meyer-Bisch, Jean-Michel Lucas, Christelle Blouët, the “Fribourg Declaration”, etc.
-
Transmitting cultural rights: a question of coherence
What facilitation methods reveal about our relationship with people.
How can we talk about cultural democracy within an authoritarian framework? How can we defend respect for each person’s culture while imposing a (…) -
The political dimension of organisational frameworks
When forms contradict intentions: organising cultural democracy.
We talk about cultural democracy, horizontality, cultural rights. But the concrete frameworks we put in place often tell a very different story. (…) -
Will Heritage Still Be Part of Our Lives in 2045?
Digitising collections is not enough: the challenge is to enable their appropriation by citizens.
Cultural practices in 2045 will be as different from ours as ours are from those of 2005. At that time, YouTube did not exist, no one had a (…) -
The Representation of One’s Cultural Role
What the Association of French Mayors survey reveals about the cultural imaginary of local authorities.
What do we presuppose when we speak of “audiences distant from culture”? The AMF survey, read as an anthropological document, unveils the (…) -
Algorithms and Cultural Rights
How algorithms, far from confining us, implement cultural rights through democratic discoverability based on metadata.
Algorithms are regularly criticized as tools that supposedly lock us into “filter bubbles.” We must free ourselves from them, we are told. Yet (…) -
Domination at the Heart of Culture
How laudatory terms mask power relations in the cultural sector.
The praise we bestow upon “great artists” reveals, beneath its flattering appearances, a structure of domination. Behind admiration lies the (…) -
Making Room for Adolescents: Rethinking Our Approaches in Cultural Action
From democratisation to cultural democracy.
Cultural action and mediation with adolescents challenge the foundations of our practices: between framework and transgression, between physical (…) -
Symbolization as a tool for mobilization
When the collective and digital traces build cultural engagement.
Faced with an abundance of digital cultural practices, cultural venues struggle to mobilize “audiences.” I argue here that this difficulty does (…) -
Legitimate participation as the horizon of cultural events
From legitimacy to participate: how cultural rights transform our practices.
Cultural rights are often misunderstood. Their strength lies in their capacity to transform our practices: moving from a top-down programming (…) -
The Accelerated Eye
Manifesto for a new ecology of the gaze.
What if speed were not the enemy of culture, but the instrument of a new form of sensitive intelligence? A radical reappropriation of our right to (…) -
Authorizing Creation
For a radical democratization of the creative act.
How can artistic creation become a political act of collective emancipation? By carrying within itself, in its form and process, the authorization (…) -
Creative Freedom and Cultural Rights
A dialectic at the heart of cultural policies.
French cultural policy today finds itself at the crossroads of two fundamental principles, both enshrined in law: creative freedom and cultural (…) -
Cultural Rights in Light of Personal History
At the beginning of my journey as an engaged cultural actor.
The question of cultural rights has long shaped my commitment, well before the term came to light. Through my story, I attempt to show how a (…) -
Cooperative Narratives
Creating polyphonic narrative devices to transform academic knowledge into living and operative knowledge.
How can we overcome the limits of academic narrative to create truly shared knowledge? A concrete experience of collective writing devices that (…) -
The myth of recognition through cultural democratization
Rethinking artistic value beyond systems of domination.
Artistic recognition is less about talent than about a social game that some refuse to participate in. A reflection on alternative paths to (…) -
Cultural Rights and Digital Discoverability
For a cultural policy adapted to digital spaces.
Faced with the failure of many institutional digital cultural strategies, cultural rights and its corollary cultural democracy seem to me to be (…) -
Freedom and Cultural Rights
A renewed approach to democratic dignity, through the contribution of two new rights.
Cultural rights, seemingly guarantors of human dignity, are emptied of their meaning when they fail to forcefully articulate the question of (…) -
Cultural Rights and Digital Technology
Rethinking digital tools in service of cultural democracy.
How can digital technology become a lever for cultural emancipation rather than an instrument of dependence? I propose a digital implementation of (…) -
The specter of the other
From anxious dehumanization to confident recognition.
How can the other, a subject of rights, become a threatening figure? A reflection born from a confrontation with reality, beyond the fantasies and (…) -
Cultural data and cultural rights
For an inclusive heritage democracy in the digital age.
Citizen cultural data is tomorrow’s heritage. Their recognition and preservation constitute a major democratic challenge for building a (…) -
Corporate memory at the service of cultural rights
Rethinking the relationship between cultural venues and people.
Cultural institutions, through their failure to collect and care for data, forget those they welcome, denying their dignity. This amnesia (…) -
Cultural rights and preservation of digital heritage
Bernard Stiegler’s technical philosophy sheds political light.
Have you ever tried to find a video you loved on YouTube from ten years ago? A blog post that made an impression on you? Your friends’ photos on (…) -
Artistic Legitimization, Cultural Rights, and Construction of the Individual
Between horizontality and the need for recognition.
Artistic legitimization, between traditional hierarchies and new digital forms, questions individual and collective recognition. By intersecting (…) -
Cultural rights and the “fight” against the far right
How to rebuild democracy in our cultural spaces.
How the discourse of “fighting against the far right” stigmatizes voters, compromises democratic dialogue and becomes hate speech. It would be (…) -
Architecture of artistic venues and cultural rights
The impact of location on social roles.
The architecture of cultural venues shapes roles and often limits participation. An approach inspired by digital spaces would enable cultural (…) -
Strategy, design and technical implementation of the “Azimut” platform
The resource portal for artistic practices.
I am supporting and leading, on behalf of the MPAA, in its current phase, the strategy, design, and technical implementation of this platform, (…) -
Synthesis of the seminar: “What pedagogy by and for cultural rights?”
Organized by UFISC, Opale, Réseau Culture 21, Observatoire des politiques culturelles, Laboratoire des droits culturels and Ligue de l’enseignement (February 6, 2025).
Workshop to find out what stage the partners had reached in their work on the “cultural rights” certification referential project in the context (…) -
Conference: “EAC and cultural rights: convergences to be identified and implemented”
Dans le cadre des Rencontres territoriales “Artistic and cultural education & Territorial cultural projects” (Foix, February 5, 2025).
How can cultural rights be a tool for better implementation of artistic and cultural education projects? And how we can identify convergences (…) -
Cultural rights and professional postures
Tools for the concrete implementation of cultural rights.
Cultural rights, stemming from the Fribourg Declaration (2007), represent a major advancement for cultural democracy. However, their practical (…) -
“Cultural rights” creative writing seminar
Master Arts du Spectacle, université de Caen Normandie 2021-2022-2023-2024.
A practical seminar on digital writing, with the theme of cultural rights. Students approach writing in the contemporary sense of the term, (…) -
“On the ineffectiveness of our works in real life”.
Commentary on the text by Eva Doumbia & Kader Attia (2023).
In July 2023, visual artist Kader Attia and director Eva Doumba published a text (in Analyse Opinion Critique) in response to the youth “riots” (…) -
Artistic creation in a digital environment
Commentary on the report commissioned by DRAC Bretagne (August 2023).
A study on the subject of digital and artistic creation reveals, through its unquestioned biases, the unconscious desire not to move the lines of (…) -
Digital technology, a tool for mediation and cultural democracy
Webinar on Monday, October 9, 2023 from 10am to 1pm.
Restitution of the “Digital Workshops” project by Cultures du Cœur and Benoît Labourdette Production, offered as part of the Été culturel program (…) -
Itinéraire bis, the path of cultural rights
Action research conducted by the MPAA (Paris).
Accompaniment in the animation, production of traces and fabrication of the web platform resources of the research-action “Itinéraire bis, chemin (…) -
Raising awareness of cultural rights - Nantes métropole (September 30, 2022)
Co-design and co-hosting of a one-day event for Nantes’ cultural players.
Taking ownership of cultural rights concepts and approaches through cooperative creativityA small group of cultural players from Nantes, led (…) -
Analyze your project using the Fribourg Declaration
Working method
How to set in motion an approach open to cultural rights, that is to say, to put more democracy in the projects and the relationship with the (…) -
John Dewey : an inspirer of cultural rights?
Sharing my interest in an inspiring personality.
The notion of “cultural rights” is increasingly present in the debates within the cultural sector. They are seen by many as being at the heart of (…) -
Professional meeting “Public participation”: presentation by Benoît Labourdette
Interview of Benoît Labourdette by Jean-Yves de Lépinay (11’37s, 2020).
Sharing examples of audiovisual creation workshops conducted in the spirit of cultural rights: moving from “participation” to “interaction.” (…) -
“Cultural participation”: interview with Benoît Labourdette.
Interview with Benoît Labourdette (4’39s, 2020).
Video presentation of Benoît Labourdette’s approach to the democratic dimension of cultural action. -
Research-action “Image Education 2.1”
Collaborative action-research project led by Benoît Labourdette production in 2018 and 2019, to develop the synergy between teenage cinema (…)
-
Cultural Rights and Digital Discoverability
For a cultural policy adapted to digital spaces.
Faced with the failure of many institutional digital cultural strategies, cultural rights and its corollary cultural democracy seem to me to be (…) -
The Périfééries project’s heritage council of influence Facilitating collective intelligence in a short space of time.
As part of Saint-Denis’s bid to become European Capital of Culture 2028, I led a collective intelligence session to collect proposals on the (…) -
“Territorial approach, participation, youth and digital technology”: interview of Benoît Labourdette by Serge Saada (52’, 2021) Observatory of cultural mediation in the social field.
As part of the Observatory of cultural mediation in the social field, Serge Saada interviewed Benoît Labourdette on the impact of the (…) -
Cultural data and cultural rights For an inclusive heritage democracy in the digital age.
Citizen cultural data is tomorrow’s heritage. Their recognition and preservation constitute a major democratic challenge for building a (…) -
Digital technology, a tool for mediation and cultural democracy Webinar on Monday, October 9, 2023 from 10am to 1pm.
Restitution of the “Digital Workshops” project by Cultures du Cœur and Benoît Labourdette Production, offered as part of the Été culturel program (…)
