(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
For SV, culture has been both a political one perspective on the whole of social development and a political one of fields of great importance. The perspective can promote ethical and aesthetic values and qualities in different areas of society. The subject area is about experience, experience and unfolding in art and the wider cultural life. The party has through a number of initiatives, including through our alternative state budget, promoted a more active, offensive and binding cultural policy than other parties. During this parliamentary period, we have received SP and AP on a cultural boost. The three parties have made joint remarks on, among other things, increased cultural grants and a more binding statutory public cultural initiative. SV's emphasis on cultural policy is also reflected in the fact that the party has had a very active cultural policy selection for over ten years. The committee has had close contact with the artists and cultural organizations, has organized seminars and conferences, has been an adviser to our cultural politicians, has contributed to the party's cultural policy initiative and priorities, has participated in election campaigns etc.
It is all the more disappointing that both the program committee's proposal and the National Board's recommendation to the Work Program 2005-2009 do not mark cultural policy in a separate chapter. Admittedly, the cultural part of the program has been greatly improved compared to the first draft of the program committee. It has been edited much more clearly. It has been formulated more precisely on both principles and concrete measures. But – still, cultural policy has not been found important enough to be marked as one of thirteen chapters. It is run in the middle of a chapter on health, social and crime policy. Some would say overrun – by being placed between these heavy and heavily regulated areas.
The SV's national meeting must highlight cultural policy in a separate chapter. We have previously suggested this to the program committee, without any impact. We should mention four arguments for this, arguments that are closely related:
1. SV should emphasize that cultural policy is important enough to "deserve" a separate chapter. As it stands now, we risk with a certain right, at least with a certain rhetorical impact, accusations / polemics in the election campaign that SV downplays cultural policy because the area has not been given a separate chapter. It has had it in most SV programs before. And it has mostly had that in most other parties' programs.
2. Through a separate cultural policy chapter, we mark as a matter of course that cultural values and interests must both be cross-sectoral and constitute a separate independent policy area. The area shall be made visible in programs, have its own ministry, separate municipal agencies and elected committees. With such an organization, cultural and cultural policy values and interests can weigh heavily on the rest of society – at the same time as it can safeguard the intrinsic value of art and the broader cultural life for individuals, groups and society.
SV has often been skeptical that cultural policy has been "sectorally abused" through
organization and invisibility in broader agencies in the primary and county municipalities. We were critical of the fact that the cultural policy in the Storting for approx. 10 years ago was incorporated into a professional committee for administration and family affairs. Tactically, it is therefore unfortunate that this policy area is now "incorporated" into a chapter on "Welfare and quality of life" where health policy, social policy and criminal policy dominate. A typical consequence of such a "sectoral abuse" was that only one of around thirty posts was made about cultural policy at SV's future conference on 6-7 December when the chapter in which culture was involved was discussed. In this way, cultural policy risks being pushed aside due to the actual organization of the field.
4. SV, AP and SP in the Storting have marked common cultural policy interests and proposals through the "Culture Promise". In a joint recommendation to the government's culture report and state budget, the three have proposed legislation on important public cultural tasks, increased funding and a number of concrete measures that can mean a nationwide broad and prosperous cultural boost. In such an offensive process, it is extra unfortunate that the cultural policy in SV's program does not stand out clearly through a separate chapter.
Our conclusion is that it is both politically unfortunate and tactically unwise to reduce the cultural policy in SV's work program to some sections between health, social affairs and crime policy. Our hope is that SV's national meeting marks the importance of cultural policy by giving the current sections on The Great Cultural Promise, Sports and Outdoor Life and Media Policy a separate program chapter.
