Participating in arts and cultural activities makes us more likely to trust and empathise with people from different cultural backgrounds, more likely to hold positive civic and democratic values, and more likely to vote.

Those are the findings of the newly-published European Commission report Culture and Democracy: the evidence which brings together 298 studies from 53 countries to identify “the concrete link between democracy and culture”.

At the community level, the report shows that the “density of local cultural offer in an area and the volume of direct and indirect public funding for cultural opportunities are positively correlated with rates of cultural participation and with patterns of civic and democratic behaviours.”

In other words, the more local arts and culture for us to enjoy, and the more governments invest in that, the healthier our democracy. 

Zooming out to the national level, the research shows that strong democratic indicators—such as capable governments, transparency, rule of law—are strongly correlated with cultural participation. 

In other words, governments who operate with integrity as opposed to corruption tend to have citizens who actively create, share and discuss art. 

Of course, the strong link between culture and active citizenship is nothing new—and nor is it specific to Europe. 

A 2009 report by the National Endowment for the Arts found that American adults who attend exhibitions and performances are 20% more likely to vote than those who don’t. A 2017 Americans for the Arts study found that artsworkers are twice as likely to vote at federal elections and four times as likely to vote at state and local elections. Both reports highlight strong correlations between cultural participation and democracy.

In a country where voter suppression and book-banning are on the rise, it’s easy to spot the negative aspect of that correlation: the relationship between cultural oppression and declining democracy.

Governments who don’t want their citizens to be curious, critical and connected tend not to value artists, invest in the arts or implement cultural policies.

The new National Cultural Policy, says Minister for the Arts Tony Burke, is “aimed at one thing: empowering Australian artists.”

“The arts ask questions,” prime minister Anthony Albanese recently told parliament, which is “sometimes uncomfortable for those of us in public life, but that is a good thing.”

Encouraging people to ask exactly those questions about culture and democracy, in 2018 the Museum of Australian Democracy curated an exhibition for adults and children called Democracy: Are you in?

The exhibition was one of the outcomes of the Museum’s partnership with the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis at the University of Canberra. Called Democracy 2025, the project addressed the global decline in trust in democracy. Its key questions included How to Rebuild Trust in Government, Public Engagement and its Impact on Parliament, and How Can We Clean Up Politics?

Instead of supporting this work, the initiative was met with aggressive resistance by the former Australian government. The Museum of Australian Democracy was advised via a parliamentary inquiry to focus on “inspiring faith” in democracy, “rather than focusing on critical debates.” The former government then directed the Museum to present an exhibition curated instead by the Australian Electoral Commission. 

A government-mandated exhibition imposed on a public cultural institution is not the mark of a democratic nation. 

The European Commission’s report makes a number of recommendations, many of which are already to be found in Australia’s new National Cultural Policy.

They include highlighting “the crucial role that arts and culture can play in the delivery of wider policy objectives” in areas such as “health, social inclusion, migration and urban regeneration”. 

The report also advises that governments “Leave no one behind”, recommending the introduction of “measures and incentives that remove administrative, financial, linguistic, socio-economic and other barriers to participation” in arts and culture. 

Echoing this, “Do not silence, do not be silenced” was the key imperative to emerge from the recent World Summit on Arts and Culture, presented in May by the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies. The Summit championed the value of artistic freedom and cultural rights to contemporary democracies, and cautioned against the discriminatory exclusion of voices. 

The European Commission’s report is a timely warning. Authoritative voices from all over the world are telling us that governments who dismiss arts policy and democratic cultural participation risk promoting poor civic behaviours. 

In other words, culture wars deliberately undermine democracy.

The lessons for Australia are clear: effective, comprehensive and bipartisan cultural policy is vital for our cohesion as a nation. This means investing in independent voices and the infrastructures of independent creative practice.

We also need to call out culture wars immediately, before they can tangibly undermine public integrity—and before they fester into vilification and racism. 

With a new national cultural policy in its early stages, there’s a lot to be optimistic about as Australia radically reframes its approach to cultures of creativity and mutual trust.