lThe arts sector has been waiting for its minister for three months and whoever comes out of the hat will have to take a serious look at the Culture Pass. Let’s be more direct: when are we going to stop charging fees? Reports are piling up on the subject, up to the one from mid-July, drawn up by the general inspection of cultural affairs, which notes that this system implemented in 2021 does not fulfill its function. It is even counterproductive.
The initial, laudable aim is to encourage young people aged 18 and over to discover the rich cultural offering available to the public (theatre, art cinema, novels, exhibitions, operas). To do so, they receive 300 euros, which they can spend as they wish via a digital application. The amount drops to 30 euros for 16 and 17-year-olds, and to 20 euros for 15-year-olds.
The vast majority of young people spend their 300 euros (it would have been surprising otherwise), but we need to see exactly who and how. Firstly, the richest benefit much more from this windfall than the modest young people. This is already a problem, because this pass was created less for the former, who have enough means to pay for cultural leisure on their own, than for the latter, who are far from having it.
Two-thirds of the money spent is spent on books, mainly manga, then popular video games or blockbuster movies. The cultural tastes of young people are their business, there is nothing to say about that here. On the other hand, since this is public money, it is worth discussing how it is spent.
Failure is a foregone conclusion
The Culture Pass amplifies successful works, although it was conceived as a passport to discovery: how can we discover what we don’t know? This money then ends up in the pockets of private and mostly foreign cultural producers (major record labels, video game labels and film companies) who often don’t need it – apart from bookshops – when it was primarily intended to help works and places subsidised by the State and local authorities. As an added benefit, there is a solid traffic of Culture Pass: young people buy books which they will then resell to other young people.
Let’s look at a fiasco. The more successful the Cultural Pass is, the more it widens the inequalities it is supposed to correct. And then it is expensive. Two hundred and sixty million euros. This is almost three times more than the money spent by the State on artistic education.
The most astonishing thing about this affair is that failure was a foregone conclusion. How could anyone believe that a magic wand-like chequebook would erase cultural divisions – between rich and poor, urban and rural centres, popular works and the like – when, for forty years, dozens of competent and committed creative managers have been working on it – with mixed success?
You have 53.99% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
