Cultural policy is used to promote accountability and protect different forms of culture, including cultural goods that society promotes or receives as a legacy from previous generations, and which are the cumulative result of artistic creation, values and beliefs that the community shares.

In the second half of the 20th century, with the development of the welfare state, a new social challenge emerged, to improve and give access to culture; this manifested itself in the development of policies for the promotion of the arts and the protection of cultural heritage. The debate since then has been to find reasons and limitations on public action in the field of culture (who should receive public assistance), and also what the most appropriate procedure for the allocation of public resources must be. More recently, the debate has broadened: first, the very activity of artists and cultural agents now often requires a technical, administrative outreach and a more sophisticated support structure. In recent years, the cultural sector has become much more diverse (a process stimulated in many cases by new information and communication technologies, the globalisation of markets for cultural products and especially the rise in entertainment products) and has become a more important sector within the whole economy and society. Therefore, cultural activity increasingly needs the support of an organisational structure, rather complex logistics, and the involvement of different public and private actors - but above all, it needs to be integrated in an ambitious and clear cultural policy to be effective.

At the same time, global trends are showing much more interest for cultural operators to develop cross-border approaches to culture –understanding the political, social and economic climate of international engagement is an important step towards effective international cultural action.

In this changing context, the aim of this course will focus on identifying the institutional and organisational framework determining cultural action, studying how the industry involves different public and private stakeholders and analysing the planning process through which cultural policies meet targets and result in projects, programmes and concrete actions.