Socially inclusive cultural policy and arts-based urban community regeneration

With the outbreak of the global financial crisis last fall, the range of social problems occurring as a result of globalization are clearly and dramatically intensifying and the degree to which the weak are being deprived of their fundamental rights to employment opportunity, etc. is increasing. In this climate, the problems of relief for socially disadvantaged persons and social participation and inclusion have assumed a renewed and enhanced urgency and in this article, I would like to consider a method of resolving the issues of social exclusion based not on a shift in economic assistance or the welfare system, but on the present state of cultural policy. Lying at the root of that idea is Creative City Theory, which calls for the regeneration of urban areas through creative cultural activities (industries), but the specific aim of this article is to deepen practical research on the intersecting fields of creative culture and social inclusion. While carefully investigating cultural policies pursued in the city of Osaka during the 10-year period between 1999 and 2008, I will elucidate the limits of the old style of urban cultural governance pursued there by detailing the process whereby independent, socially inclusive arts activities developed in Osaka, beginning first by looking at the failures of contemporary arts-focused cultural policies (stage one) and then focusing on the independent efforts of urban citizens to confront and overcome those setbacks (stage two). Then, in light of this new trend, I will suggest a desirable form in which this collaboration between local government and urban citizen can be carried out in the future.