This study focuses on cultural planners, who have been produced and continuously trained in response to the growing social demand for cultural professionals accompanying the transition to a “cultural society.” Since the implementation of local aut...
This study focuses on cultural planners, who have been produced and continuously trained in response to the growing social demand for cultural professionals accompanying the transition to a “cultural society.” Since the implementation of local autonomy, the expansion of cultural and artistic spaces and increase in cultural events and festivals have required specialized cultural personnel. From the perspective of cultural policy, the social need for professionals capable of engaging with regional and everyday culture has also intensified. Following the enactment of culture-related legislation, cultural professionals have been continuously produced in diverse fields. As the main agents of cultural activity planning, cultural planners are expected to lead the field of cultural planning and generate visible outcomes. Through the planning and execution of cultural activities, they play a pivotal role in driving changes in local culture, fostering the growth of the cultural ecosystem, and shaping the value of cultural planning. Nevertheless, social understanding of cultural planners remains limited. Owing to the complex roles they perform—planning, management, mediation, and practical operations—the definition of cultural planners has not yet been clearly established.
Despite these challenges, cultural planners take pride in their work, striving to create better environments for cultural activity planning and to construct their own identities in the process.
Against this backdrop, this study attempted to elucidate the self-identity formation process through an inquiry into the narratives of cultural planners’ experiences in cultural activity planning. Under the research question, “What kind of identity do cultural planners construct through their experiences in cultural activity planning?” this study examined the background of their entry into cultural planning, the content of their experiences, and the values and meanings derived from those experiences, focusing on how these factors influenced the planners’ own lives.
This study employed a narrative inquiry methodology to explore cultural planners’ experiences in cultural activity planning and comprehensively analyze the key elements that contribute to the formation of their “self-identity.” Purposive sampling was conducted to select the interview participants, who comprised 16 cultural planners who have been active within the framework of Korean cultural policy from the 1990s to the mid-2020s. In-depth interviews were carried out with these participants.
The analysis of the cultural planners’ self-identity was grounded in the experiential elements derived from participants’ cultural activity planning
experiences, and George Herbert Mead’s concept of symbolic interactionism was applied. Symbolic interactionism posits that the subjective self (I), which seeks novelty, and the objective self (me), which orients toward socially unified norms and habitual practices, are integrated to form the social self. This study identified the formation of cultural planners’ identities through the combination of the subjective self (reflective elements internalized through experience) and objective self (interactional elements shaped by social relationships). In this process, cultural planners’ experiences in cultural activity planning functioned as social experiences that exerted a positive influence on local communities, while simultaneously generating communal values through the integration of internal and practical values.
The findings further revealed that the participants defined cultural planners in diverse ways, which can be broadly categorized into five types: (1) planners as practical agents, (2) integrative experts who understand context, (3) individuals who plan the language, emotions, and memories of life, (4) mediators of connective values, and (5) creators of cultural ecosystems. These definitions appeared fluid and mutually interwoven, reflecting the dynamic roles and identities of cultural planners.
Meanwhile, the participants were engaging in multifaceted practices to become cultural planners consistent with the definitions described above.
These practices can be summarized as follows: First, cultural planners continuously strive to learn and transform themselves, accumulating their cultural planning experiences as internal motivation and strengthening their inner capacity. Second, this learning process unfolds through interactions of cooperation, linkage, and networking. Third, cultural planners aspire to become “significant others”—meaningful individuals formed in the process of socialization who, through interaction, foster the growth of the self. In other words, they want to exert a positive influence on fellow cultural planners and provide them with constructive energy. Fourth, they endeavor to generate creative solutions rather than being subordinated to given systemic environments. Fifth, through their cultural planning experiences, they seek to cultivate their own unique characteristics to the fullest extent possible. Taken together, these findings indicate that the participants are shaping their self-identity as cultural planners in ways that contribute to qualitative changes in the cultural ecosystem and the creation of communal values.
The significance of this study lies in its exploration of cultural planners’ experiences in cultural activity planning through narratives, thereby deriving and analyzing the diverse experiential elements that emerge in the field and reaffirming the social position of cultural planners within practice. The study findings are expected to serve as foundational data for understanding the interconnection between individual cultural planning experiences and the dynamic cultural flows of the cultural ecosystem.
Furthermore, the results may contribute to the formulation of policies that ensure the sustained activities of cultural planners and support their growth through practice.
Keywords: Cultural Planner, Cultural Activity Planning Experience, Self-Identity, Symbolic Interactionism, Community, Cultural Ecosystem, Significa