Towards Greater Citizen Participation in Financing Public Cultural Institutions—Legal Barriers and Proposed Solutions

Abstract

The paper contains a conceptual proposal that aims at indicating new models of participatory financing of cultural institutions as well as actions towards supporting culture. It presents results of a qualitative study in the form of action research, on identifying legal barriers of financing of cultural institutions in Poland. Additionally, it presents practical suggestions to the encountered problems that were worked out after discussions with cultural managers, taxpayers, and government administration decision-makers. The unique value of the study is a multidimensional and complex analysis of participatory financing of culture, citing varied sources and bearing a structured research procedure. We suggest a new discussion on establishing legal solutions for increasing of the funding or making the financing of cultural institutions more flexible, which appears to be particularly important in crisis times. All is presented as an original concept of participatory citizen-enterprise fiscal mechanism of supporting cultural institutions. We present a pragmatic solution to a problem of additional public support of culture, which can be put into practice parallel to state mechanisms, considering culture as a part of sustainable development.