Transmitting cultural rights: a question of coherence

How can we talk about cultural democracy within an authoritarian framework? How can we defend respect for each person’s culture while imposing a tightly scheduled programme? The transmission of cultural rights raises a radical question: that of coherence between what we say and how we say it. An account of a training day where the method became the message.

The paradox of transmission

There is something deeply paradoxical about the idea of “training people in cultural rights.” To train, etymologically, is to give form, to shape. It is an action that flows from those who know to those who do not yet know. Yet cultural rights tell us precisely the opposite: that every person carries a legitimate culture, that knowledge does not descend from above, that richness is born from the encounter between different cultures and not from imposing one culture over others.

How, then, can we transmit cultural rights without betraying them? How can we be simultaneously in a posture of transmission (since there are indeed legal, philosophical, and historical bodies of knowledge to share) and in a posture of respect for the cultural rights of those we are addressing?

This question, far from being theoretical, is a question of practice. It arises at every moment when facilitating a working day: in the arrangement of the space, in the way instructions are given, in the choice of what we show, in the room given to each person’s voice, and above all in the ability to abandon one’s own programme when the group needs something else. The pedagogical methods we use are the first message we send to people. Before we have even uttered the words “cultural rights,” we are either putting them into practice or contradicting them.

I recently had the opportunity to facilitate a day of awareness-raising on cultural rights for the team of a performing arts production office. Seven people, most of whom were discovering the subject for the first time. A single day. The account of this experience allows me to share a few methodological principles which, I believe, go beyond the scope of this particular day and touch on what makes the transmission of cultural rights so singular and so demanding.

Staging the space before saying a word

I arrived early. The day was taking place in the organisation’s own premises, that is, in an everyday workspace. This detail is not trivial. We work differently in a familiar place than in a neutral one. My first action was therefore to stage the space, to transform it enough so that people would feel, upon arriving, that something singular was about to happen, while still being at home.

On the table, I had laid out about a hundred books. Not only works on cultural rights in the strict sense, but a deliberately eclectic bibliographic landscape: American pragmatist philosophy with John Dewey, progressive pedagogy with Célestin Freinet, anthropology, contemporary sociology, non-violent communication, feminist works, essays by Hartmut Rosa, Ivan Illich, Hannah Arendt, Romain Graziani, and others. Journals, articles.

The instruction given to people upon arrival, before even sitting down, was simple: choose two books, leaf through them, photograph what interests you, the cover, an excerpt, the back cover…

Why this entry through books? Because it immediately sends a message without needing to state it: each person will build their own path. There is no required route, no book one “should” read. Each person’s autonomy in their relationship to knowledge is recognised from the first minutes. Choosing a book is an intimate gesture: it says something about our curiosities, our intuitions, about what attracts us without always knowing why. It is already an exercise of cultural rights.

The diversity of the books offered carries another message: cultural rights are not a closed subject, a sealed body of work. They draw nourishment from philosophy, pedagogy, sociology, feminist thought, reflections on digital technology, and more. This disciplinary breadth is constitutive of the subject. Showing it from the very first gesture, rather than explaining it in a speech, is to make it tangible, real, and already operative in the enrichment received by participants through the discovery of these works, in their diversity, without formatting ideas or thought.

Identifying communities before theorising them

Communities are much discussed in cultural rights. The Fribourg Declaration makes them one of its eight pillars. But the word often remains abstract, even alarming for those who associate it with communitarianism. Rather than starting with a definition, it is possible to let people experience community directly.

The “sit-stand” exercise is disarmingly simple: you ask about ten questions, if the answer is yes you stand up, if not you stay seated. Who came by bicycle? Who likes coffee? Who is discovering cultural rights? Who is wearing second-hand clothing? Who has an artistic practice, professional or amateur?

It goes quickly, it makes people laugh, and it identifies communities. The community of coffee lovers. The community of those who have an artistic practice. The community of those who spend too much time on administrative paperwork. We discover that we share unexpected things, and that communities reconfigure with each question. This is not merely an “icebreaker,” it is a concrete enactment of what cultural rights mean by “community”: not an identity enclosure, but a multitude of shifting, interwoven affiliations.

In ten questions and three minutes, we have had a felt experience of something that would have required lengthy theoretical development to explain. And above all, we have learned things about each other. We now know that one person has already been trained in cultural rights, that another changed careers, that only a third of the group has an artistic practice. This information is precious for the rest of the day.

Personal elaboration rather than passive reception

After a more conventional phase of transmission (an introduction to the meaning of cultural rights, their history, the distinction between cultural democratisation and cultural democracy), the question arises: how can each person appropriate what has just been said? We know from neuroscience, and particularly from Olivier Houdé’s work on “cognitive resistance,” that genuine learning requires the creation of new synaptic connections. For this to occur, two conditions are necessary: that the person feels safe, and that they are in an active position.

A simple exercise consists of putting people in pairs, standing, moving through the space, and asking them to explain to the other person what cultural rights are and why they matter. One speaks, the other listens. No discussion, no debate: just listening. Then they switch.

The mechanism at work is well known: it is by explaining something to someone that we shape our own thinking. By verbalising, we structure what was still floating. We identify what we have understood and what remains unclear. The exercise works regardless of group size (you can do it with a hundred people) and it guarantees that everyone will have spoken, including the most reserved, who in a classic round-table might never have expressed themselves.

In the same spirit, inviting each person to produce a drawing, a diagram, or a short text synthesising their understanding of cultural rights, with felt-tip pens and coloured paper, is to offer another mode of elaboration. This is not a school exercise. You can draw a smiling face, a diagram with arrows, a single word. All of these productions, uploaded to a shared digital space and viewed collectively on a screen, form a kind of polyphonic landscape of the group’s understanding. The whole is worth more than the sum of its parts, and each person finds their contribution legitimised by its inscription within this ensemble.

Creation as a tool for understanding

One of the most significant moments of such a day is when a creative exercise is proposed. Not an “artistic” exercise in the sense that one would need to master a technique, but a simple, accessible creative gesture, connected to the subject.

The proposal was as follows: take a photograph, with your phone, in which a hand is visible, and which tells something about cultural rights. People could go out into the street, use objects from the office, explore the space. Then the photos were uploaded to a shared folder and viewed collectively, enlarged, in the darkened room.

The feedback instruction was unusual: the person who took the photo is not allowed to speak. It is the others who reflect back what they received, felt, and interpreted.

This reversal is at the heart of what cultural rights change in our relationship to creation and mediation. In a conventional setup, the author explains their intention, and the “audience” listens. Here, it is the opposite: the gaze of others enriches the work, charges it with meanings the author had not necessarily envisaged. Several things then happen.

First, we observe that each image elicits very different interpretations. There is no single meaning, no “correct reading.” This is a concrete enactment of the diversity of cultures: we do not see the same thing, and all these visions are legitimate.

Next, the person who created the image receives something unexpected. They took their photo quickly, they are not necessarily proud of it, they may find it unremarkable. And others see depth, resonances, beauty in it. This experience touches on what psychoanalysis calls symbolisation: something I place outside myself comes back to me enriched by the gaze of others, and participates in my construction. We are not in the realm of “valorisation” (which presupposes a hierarchy), but in a process of self-construction through encounter.

Finally, this arrangement overturns the quintessential school question: “what did the author mean?” Not only is this question often impossible to answer (since the act of creation mobilises intuition as much as intention) but it reduces the work to its conscious project alone. Welcoming the multiplicity of interpretations means recognising that creation exceeds its author, and that the person who receives is not an empty vessel but a subject carrying their own culture.

Knowing when to abandon the programme

This is perhaps the most difficult and most important principle. For this day, I had prepared a detailed, timed programme, with different sequences meant to follow one another. When the afternoon resumed, a conversation developed among the participants, about their trajectories, their doubts, their professional experiences, the connections they were making between cultural rights and their work. The conversation was rich, deep, personal. It did not correspond at all to the planned programme.

I could have “refocused,” recentred, brought the group “back on track.” This is what many facilitators do, out of concern for honouring the contract, for “holding” the programme. But this is precisely what cultural rights tell us: that people must be able to take their place, and that this place can transform the very framework of the encounter.

What was being exchanged in that moment overflowed the programme and brought it to life. People were making connections between cultural rights and their intimate experiences: their relationship to a performance that had marked them, the feeling of not feeling authorised in certain spaces, the evolution of their own criteria of judgement. They were discovering each other in an unusual depth. Letting this conversation unfold meant recognising that the objective (that each person find their own path in relation to cultural rights) was better served by this discussion than by the sequence I had planned.

I later shared this reflection with the group: what happened this afternoon was not planned, but that is precisely cultural rights in action. You took your place, and the day was transformed by it. This capacity of the facilitator to modify the programme without anxiety, to sense that what is happening is more important than what was planned, requires a form of trust: trust in the group, trust in the subject, and trust in the idea that transmission cannot be reduced to the transfer of content.

The framework as that which authorises

We often believe that a framework is what constrains, what forbids. Ask around: “what is a framework?” and you will hear about limits, rules, what you are not allowed to do. Yet the framework, from the perspective of cultural rights, is what authorises. A well-established framework makes expression, risk-taking, and encounter possible. It creates the conditions for trust.

In a training day, the framework is built through the accumulation of small gestures: the staging of the space, the diversity of the books offered, the instructions that recognise each person’s autonomy, the exercises that put everyone in a position to contribute, the feedback that welcomes the diversity of interpretations, and the ability to let go of the programme when the group needs it. Each of these gestures says the same thing: you are legitimate, your culture has value, and we are going to enrich one another.

This is not a naive or demagogic posture. There are indeed bodies of knowledge to transmit (the history of the Ministry of Culture and its colonial construction, the Fribourg Declaration, the distinction between the eight rights, case-study methods, the resources of the Culture 21 network or the Observatory of Cultural Policies). But this knowledge is only fully absorbed when the manner of transmitting it is itself respectful of people’s cultural rights. Otherwise, we produce information, but not appropriation.

What coherence makes possible

At the end of this day, the remark addressed to me touched precisely on this: “There is a coherence between what you say and what you do. Your facilitation methods and tools are in harmony with the subject you are addressing, and that is too rarely the case.”

This remark is not a compliment. It is an observation, and one that should concern us: if it is “too rarely the case,” then something is not working in the way cultural rights are usually transmitted. Perhaps it is because we still too often separate content from form, substance from gesture, knowledge from relationship. Perhaps it is because training sessions are still designed according to a top-down model (one person who knows speaking to people who are learning) even though they deal with a subject that blows up this model.

Cultural rights are not a theoretical body of work that can be poured into receptive minds. They are an ethics, a way of being in relationship, a permanent practice. Transmitting them means practising them. Not in an artificial or demonstrative way, but because one is convinced that it is the only way to allow each person to truly grasp them, by making their own path, from their own culture, in respect of their own dignity.

It is in this sense that cultural rights oblige us: not only to change what we say, but to change what we do and how we do it. The same demand applies to a one-day training session, to the programming of a cultural season, to the reception at a performance venue, to the management of a team, to the building of a partnership. Working methods are not secondary. They are the very place where cultural rights are enacted, or betrayed.