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8.3 Attempt to define a framework of criteria for evaluating cultural mediation

Taking into account the points of criticism presented in Text 8.2, it becomes necessary to clearly separate quality management that is directed at operating structures from the public debate about evaluation criteria for cultural mediation. While one can find good arguments for or against the introduction of the former, the latter seems inevitable in view of the growing significance of this field of work. The more important it becomes for the various individuals and organizations in cultural mediation to take a position and provide a rationale for their own actions, the more urgent becomes the question of what good cultural mediation actually is. Although everyone involved continually engages in evaluation, only those who have adopted a set of criteria clearly based on sound reasoning can render them transparent, put them out for discussion and call on other people to contribute to their definition on that basis.

For that reason, we attempt below to outline, incompletely and with no claim to universal validity, a few principles to guide the evaluation of cultural mediation with its affirmative, reproductive, deconstructive and transformative → functions for cultural institutions. We have not formulated criteria for the reformative function in detail, because this function consists only of an institution using the experiences it gains in cultural mediation to improve practices already in place. Drawing on the work of Constanze Wimmer (Wimmer 2010), we use the quality dimensions of structure, process and outcomes as a → quality model In addition, we define the perspectives and the presumed → objectives of the evaluation. In this context, the perspective of the cultural institutions was taken as the example in each case. This makes it easier to understand and compare the different functions of cultural mediation. Moreover, the institutional perspective seems a particularly apt choice at the present time since many institutions are in the process of expanding their cultural mediation programmes and asking themselves how they should evaluate cultural mediation.

Again, readers should keep the following in mind while considering this attempt: “Since quality is a relational term, not one that is value-independent, its essence can only be grasped in the interplay among various influences and framework conditions.” (→ Fuchs 2010; → BKJ 2010).