Co-creating cultural encounter

By Geert Drion Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands

/TEACHING EXPERIENCES

Co-creating cultural encounter

Introduction

In Europe, for cultural organisations, managers, practitioners, policy makers and network-builders alike, the need for new vocabularies and methods for (cross-)cultural encounters has become increasingly urgent, given the polarised cultural discourse that contextualises their work. In the Netherlands, a new framework was developed for the arrangement of these encounters, providing a shared vocabulary and method for all levels of organisation. The framework provides a conceptual base, as well as a series of practical tools for the arrangement of cultural encounter: when “cultural self” and “cultural other” interact imaginatively.

Positioning

Our journey started with the intuition that the discourse on cultural management, organisations and policy, which has been dominated by the dichotomy “cultural democracy vs. democratisation of culture” (e.g. Hadley & Belfiore 2018; Drion 2022, 2023) for more than a decade, could be opened up through the examination of the process-side of culture (Drion 2018, 2022a).

When looking at culture in relation to process, another dichotomy comes to light: between “the processes of culture” (how cultures interact) and “culture-as-process” (how interactions form culture). From a sociological point of view, this difference may be associated with the “intersectional” and “cross-cultural” positions respectively (Gaupp & Pelillo 2021). The intersectional understanding can be related to how differences and inequalities materialize or become incorporated in cultural production. In contrast, cross-cultural understanding can be associated with interconnectedness and border-crossings; it connotes ambiguous cultural symbols and de-stabilizing differences (Gaupp & Pelillo 2021).

Border-crossings, ambiguousness and de-stabilising difference may in turn be related to a specific interactional space that “opens up” when “outcomes are undecided” (Baecker 2012), “cultural symbols are paraphrased” (Bhabha 1994), “a phase of becoming or liminality is entered” (Turner 1982; Drion 2024), and a “playful or subjunctive mode in perception and interaction prevails” (McConachie 2015; Fischer-Lichte 2009; Henricks 2015).

This interactional “space” has further been theorized as “radical openness” or Thirdspace (Soja 1996), and as a space of “hybridity” (Werbner & Modoot 2015), i.e. conscious or unconscious cultural development, when the production of new meanings occurs on the boundaries between us and them, self and other, culture and foreign culture” (Kostogriz 2005).

Thus, from a cross-cultural, processual position, culture can be seen as an interactional process, opening up a specific interactional space of undecidedness, de-stabilisations and development. Governance (care) of this “cultural space” is of value for the maintenance of the open society and for the open, democratic future of society. This may provide a new perspective on cultural value and cultural democracy – and its consistent operationalisation in professional practice, organisations, networks and policy making (Drion 2023, 2024).

Conceptual frame

To open up these concepts for professional reflection, teaching, management, network building and policy, an elementary heuristic model was developed and tested, operationalising cultural encounter as a dedicated mode of communication: i.e. when cultural self and cultural other interact imaginatively, engaging in new (ambiguous) form and new (ambiguous) sense (Drion 2022a, 2025).

Fig. 1 Cultural encounter (represented by the “lemniscate” as symbol of recursive, playful open-endedness): self and other engaging in (ambiguous) form and (ambiguous) sense (i.e. meaning in context). [Author]

Theory

The model is grounded in a combination of the communication theory of Niklas Luhmann (sociology) and Gregory Bateson (anthropology). For Luhmann, any communication is driven by contingency: because we can never know what the other person means, we can only, perpetually, try to find out – by communicating. For Luhmann this double contingency of communication (alter and ego searching for understanding) is the motor for everything humans do trying to “make sense”: Luhmann sees society as the systemic grand total of this contingent communication process. For Bateson, there is a distinction between a mode of communicating that is geared towards meaning making (“this means that” [GD]) and an ambiguous mode of communicating (“this may mean this and that – let’s find out!” [GD]) that Bateson associates with play. Playful communication then, can be seen as mode of deliberately pursuing ambiguity, opening up new combinations of and possibilities for sensemaking. In such a communication mode, form emerges as an attractor for communication. This may sound a bit abstract, but anyone who has ever been involved in free improvisation or collaborative art making will recognise this for what it is: play developing form. Through such communication, cultural self and other engage in (simultaneous) playful exploration of emergent sense and playful exploration of emergent form: cultural encounter (Drion 2022a; Drion 2025).

Application

As a communication model, cultural encounter opens up rich possibilities for co-creating cultural events, organisation processes, networks / ecosystems and policy. As such, we functionally distinguished four interlinked “levels” for arranging cultural encounter:

1. For practitioners – that arrange actual cultural encounters
2. For (self)organisations – that arrange the facilitation of these arranged encounters
3. For networks – that arrange connections, synergy and ecology
4. For policy and governance – that arrange the facilitation of all of these arrangements

Practical tools

Subsequently, in a three-year national trial setup, six Tools were developed, addressing the four functional levels of application. The tools dovetail, to ensure consistency and help build a shared vocabulary (LKCA 2023).

1. Design tool for inclusive cultural events
2. Evaluation tool for inclusive cultural events
3. Competence (skill) tools for culture-professionals
4. Design tool for inclusive cultural organisations
5. Design tool for inclusive cultural networks
6. Design tool for inclusive cultural policy

(Three of these tools have, so far, been translated into English; see access below.)

The tools have an open, easy and game-like appearance and can be “played” by 4 to 8 participants per session (multiple parallel sessions are possible). The tools are non-directive: they facilitate practicable conversations and the design of practicable solutions – designed by the players through playing the tool. The participants collectively choose their design objective at the start of the session. The cards of the tool, placed around the table, guide the players through dedicated stages to creatively co-design their objective.

Fig. 2 Example: Table setup. [Author]

Method and steps

Each tool states the “point of departure” for the design of cultural encounters, referring to the four “corners” of the heuristic model (see Fig. 3):

Cultural encounter may spring to life when people:

• Feel at home, safe, and engage with their own culture, identity, values and symbols
• Encounter cultural others, and engage in differences creatively
• Encounter cultural form, and engage in shared cultural expressions
• Encounter cultural meaning, and engage with cultural context in a meaningful way

Fig. 3 Example: Event tool Starter card (Card 1). [Author]

Fig. 4 Example: Event tool Focus card – with the four “corners” (Card 2.) [Author]

Fig. 5/6 Examples: Event tool Fuel cards (Card 3 / 3A) [Author]

These are samples of cards form the Design tool for cultural events. It is beyond the scope of this “Teaching Experience” to present all of the cards of this tool; see below for full access. The tool leads the players to a tangible and practicable co-creative design of a specific event of their choosing. In a similar way, the other tools may guide the co-creative design of organisations, ecologies / networks and policy.

Unifying vocabulary

As such, the tools provide a consistent and substantive vocabulary that enables the four functional levels (events, organisations, networks, policy) to use the same reference for their methods and (e)valuations. This, in turn, opens up a dialogical approach to collaboration and policy making, providing a unified, process-oriented, qualitative perspective for arranging and evaluating cultural life in and of the community (Drion 2023).

Fig. 7 Unified perspectives. [Author]

Contexts

Cultural encounter does, obviously, not happen in a vacuum. Cultural self, cultural other, cultural form and cultural sense are expressions of – and instruments for – shared, self-aware commonalities, differences and boundaries. Moreover, in “culture wars”, these commonalities, differences and boundaries are polarised and deployed towards designated rhetorical and political ends, contextualising all encounters (Drion 2024).

 Fig. 8 Contexts of cultural space. [Author]

These contexts, containing powerful images and real-life patterns of hegemony, polarisation, power reproduction and exclusion, are pervasive in every cultural encounter. However, in the design-framework described here, these contexts are not politised or thematised as an oppositional “frozen” communication theme, but “liquified” through the contingency of the imaginative communication mode of cultural encounter (through playful engagement of ambiguous form and sense).

This implies a distinction between cultural confrontation and cultural encounter, which is indeed relevant in relation to this framework: in the first (confrontational) instance, the term “cultural” refers to a set of meaning and values; in the second (encounter) instance, “cultural” refers to a mode of interaction: the concept of cultural encounter describes a special quality (mode) of encounter that allows “cultural identities, values and meaning” to be brought into imaginative play. This, of course, is nothing new (and it happens all the time), and it is being promoted through all kinds of interventions and strategies. It has, however, not yet been conceptualised in a consistent model that opens it up for reflection and professional practice between dedicated levels of operation. See also: “Discussion” below.

Applications and implications

In the Netherlands, the tools for cultural encounter are being tried and tested in a wide range of applications: for the design and evaluation of arts and music lessons and courses, events, festivals, socio-cultural spaces; for the design of teacher-profiles and competence-sets; for the design of organisational change and -restructuring; for the design and evaluation of ecological participatory networks; for the co-creative design of public policy, policy instruments and valuation methods.

These applications have shown that, although the concept and tools are very easy to apprehend and apply and initially provide great energy and focus, it does take resolve, a firm hand and an integral approach to anchor the approach in a continued, enduring practice.

Discussion

The concept of culture as border-crossing process, with cultural encounter as its basic unit may be situated as a middle ground or third way in the current discourse on cultural democracy and cultural space. Being neither a project for the promotion of high art, nor a project for cultural oppositioning, it may provide new footholds for public cultural policy and shared practice. Also, it opens a new vocabulary on the boundaries between social work, education, cultural integration and the arts, as it sees cultural space as a space of open ends, of imaginative exploration and of becoming – relevant for education, wellbeing, culture and the arts alike. As such, it may be situated in the heart of the open society, facilitating a “Rortyian” process of democracy: when people acknowledge the contingency of all positions in society, including their own (Rorty 1989). This deserves more reflection.

That said, cultural boundaries do exist, often coinciding with social-economic boundaries, and form very real obstacles for cultural encounters. The duty and challenge to arrange ecosystems of cultural care (Wilson & Gross 2018) is not diminished or overtaken by the framework of cultural encounter and cultural space. The framework may, however, provide an alternative vocabulary to facilitate the approach of these urgent issues. This too, needs more reflection.

Last, although practices are developing steadily, the empirical base for cultural encounter is not yet established fully. Do cultural capabilities grow through cultural encounter? What are the lasting effects in communities? How does the artist mindset interact with social boundaries? Because these research issues have not yet been adopted by an international academic platform, it may take time to make progress on this wide front.

Access

• The tools for cultural encounter (in Dutch) are available at the website of LKCA (see below).
• The three translated tools (in English) are available through this

References:

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Biography:

Geert Drion (1960, NL) is an independent researcher and consultant. He studied Music (BA), and Cultural Policy & Management (MA). He was manager of several cultural institutions and lectured at the Utrecht University and Radboud University Nijmegen. He is currently working on a PhD (on the process-conception of culture) at the University of Groningen.