Crossing the Seine in winter. Image – Getty: KDB Media
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also:
Italy’s Book Leaders to Minister: 1.7 Million Sales Lost
Italy’s Publishers Demand a Culture Voucher Relaunch
Germany’s KulturPass is Renewed, But With a Funding Cut
‘Mastery of the Language Is the Mother of All Battles’
Our Publishing Perspectives readers are familiar with the fact that several countries’ “culture pass” programs have come under pressure.
These are programs that provide young adults at a certain age, a grant with which to pay for cultural products and services, the idea being that this can help promote cultural appreciation among younger people.
Originally led by the Italian “18App,” which provided a student turning 18 with €500 (US$528) to be spent on music, museums, books, and other cultural expenditures. The French edition of this, a promise made by Emmanuel Macron and introduced in 2021, carried a value of €300 originally.
Not surprisingly, however, when national budgets are under pressure and/or when leadership parties change, a culture pass can look like an easy target for cutbacks—like taking art from a baby.
Vincent Montagne
On Friday (November 27), a statement was issued from Paris by:
- Vincent Montagne, president of the French publishers’ association—the Syndicat national de l’édition
- Alexandra Charroin Spangenberg, president of the country’s booksellers’ union
- Séverine Weiss, president of the Permanent Council of Writers
Titled Why Break the Momentum of the Culture Pass?, the three organizational leaders write that the pass is a success, not least because 85 percent of young French people utilize it.
Alexandra Charroin Spangenberg
“For them,” the trio writes, “it represents a new tool for autonomy and freedom, also allowing them to break with the cultural determinism of social and educational environments.”
As was seen with substantial reliability in Italy, books seem to be the preferred selection of young people aged 15 to 20 using their culture passes, and a part of this apparently has to do with France’s “rich network” of local bookstores and cultural brands even in urban parts of the country.
“Booksellers testify to this: all of them have seen young people coming through their doors for the first time and benefiting from their advice to help them in their reading choices. The initial craze for manga has now given way to much more diversified sales—nearly 400,000 different titles have been purchased via the pass. A good number of these young people continue to frequent these bookstores once the pass has been used.”
“The success of the Culture Pass is because of its freedom of use. Why would we want to limit it?”
The problem? A report from the French National Book Center (CNL) “recently highlighted the worrying decline in reading among 7-to-19-year-olds, a population increasingly absorbed by screens,” write Weiss, Charroin, and Montagne.
“Not only do young people read less, but they read for less time. However, mastery of the language is the mother of all battles, and a key to accessing other cultural experiences.”
The pass, described by these three colleagues as a “pocket of freedom,” is at risk for being considerably reduced, “first by drastic cuts in the overall budget of the culture pass, but also by a “forced redirection” of part of the share of this pass toward other cultural sectors.” Ultimately, they write, all this will mean that young people simply won’t be able to make full use of the grant they’re given.
”A Pocket of Freedom’
Charroin, Montagne, and Weiss have an interesting defense of the culture pass: the defense of the freedom to read.
They argue that such an effect would represent “a real break with the spirit of the project as it was conceived.” In fact, they see this as amounting to a potential form of book censorship , as the state’s cutbacks and controls of the culture pass would add up to the government being able to influence purchases based on its efforts to “privilege certain cultural “products” or services over others.
“These developments would be extremely dangerous for many bookstores that are already economically fragile,” the three write, “and whose culture pass [income] currently represents 5 percent of turnover, even though they contribute significantly to the cultural network of the territory and to the editorial diversity of which France can be proud.”
“The Culture Pass is an effective tool in the training of our future and very young citizens,” this open letter reads. “If teenagers are enthusiastic about the adventures of the Count of Monte Cristo before they flood the cinema screens or think about the future of our planet with Un monde sans fin by Jancovici and Blain, it is because the book is not only a source of escape, but also a real springboard, a way to dream of a better world, to form one’s conscience, to think ‘bigger’ for oneself and for others.”
The three conclude, “Culture has always been synonymous with freedom and diversity. Reading is the gateway to it. Why would we want to close it? The success of the Culture Pass is because of its freedom of use. Why would we want to limit it?”
More from Publishing Perspectives on the French market and news from its publishers’ association is here, and more on Italy’s 18App program of cultural subsidy for young adults and its changed state in recent years is here. More on the broader culture pass issue and controversies is here.
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