Uncovering Cultural Engineering: What I've Learned

What’s so special about Cultural Engineering?

A notion invented by the former minister for culture of France, Claude Mollard, the idea carries with it a big ambition.

The focus here is on how to bring a wider societal impact through the implementation of cultural projects. Artistic projects concentrate on artists’ interpretation of the world and beauty. Cultural engineering eyes on the ecosystem in which other social activities are performed.

With this vocation in mind, I believe that reinforcing or changing the status quo are both commendable. The only yardstick is if any and how much progress a project can deliver to the society at large.

Like every project in all sectors, you need resources. The major ones are no doubt people and money. How to mobilise these capital is an equally unavoidable question for this field.

“Cultural” + “Engineering”?

To do so, you first need a good idea based on a legitimate cause. That’s why you need to be somehow poetically “cultural” and innovative.

When conceptualising proposals, we begin with abstract virtues, then sectors, then vehicles. We brainstorm, we exchange, we try to discover the underlying common denominators behind apparently distinct concepts and integrate them into one project.

After that you have to plan for or “engineer” the implementation. Simply put, how to make things work? On this side, it is important to be practical.

Now you may have a preliminary idea about how the two words can be brought together. While competence in project management is helpful in execution, it is only a portion. Cultural engineering says, “Think BIG, think DEEP and think WIDE”.

Further discussion: Cultural engineering: a global approach, for sustainable human development and international cooperation