Cultural foundations have been established and operated for diverse purposes by companies, the central and local governments as foundation corporations since 1990s. Regardless of founders, the main purpose of cultural foundations pertains to developme...
Cultural foundations have been established and operated for diverse purposes by companies, the central and local governments as foundation corporations since 1990s. Regardless of founders, the main purpose of cultural foundations pertains to development of culture and art and qualitative improvement of people's lives. It is time that the intents and current states of cultural foundations organized under the mission of advancement of culture and art were examined. So to speak, as cultural foundations increasingly play more roles in modern society, they should meet the demands for transparent and efficient organizational operation to grow further.
Since the local autonomy system was adopted, local governments have spent a huge sum of contribution to build cultural foundations, and businesses have supported enormous investment in arts and culture for the benefits of company images and the principle of wealth distribution. By identifying the reasons for their existence and determining their future directions in accordance with their characters, cultural foundations will be able to keep contributing to developing culture and art further.
Local cultural foundations are characterized by their organization of a third sector, which system is viable for making up for policies and maximizing supports for creative and diversified cultural and artistic activities. That is, local culture centers are capable of quenching the sense of cultural isolation prevalent in local areas, settling identification of local societies and putting the frameworks for activating local cultures on a firm footing. Local cultural foundations need develop proper culture policies for local people and foster new cultural projects. Further, by making efforts not to rely on the stable financial support from local governments they need to find ways to fix independent financial ground to run up to their original characteristics.
In the 21st century, starting from Kyeonggy cultural foundation, lots of local foundations for culture have been set up in such regions as Seongnam, Goyang, Euijeongbu and Incheon. They may well be different in terms of types and focal projects, but they are similar in that local autonomous entities have formed contributions and funds and influenced their operations. Local cultural foundations share a common need to carry out appropriate art and culture projects to promote local cities by considering their own local characteristics. In addition to organizing board of directors as a basis for independent operational executions of cultural foundations, diversified means of obtaining budgets need be developed. Though cultural foundations are to be non-profit organizations, their management should be more efficient than other profit-oriented businesses. That is because profit-driven organizations are run when they yield high profits, but cultural foundations do not have any profit sources exist.
These challenges may be met by finding solutions in overseas cases of cultural foundations in both private and public sectors. Overseas cultural foundations have had long history of performance and rich experience in their project operations, which may suggest quite a few alternatives that local culture foundations may take.
This study conducted a comparative analysis on domestic and overseas cultural foundations to seek for directions to develop local cultural foundations further. There is no denying that local entities cannot always adopt their overseas counterparts unconditionally, but they can add some modification and supplementation according to their current conditions to take appropriate policies. Through overseas cultural foundations' financial structures, policies regarding promoting donations and support committees can be sought, and their operations of board of directors may hint something to fill the part local foundations lack in. For financial self-reliance, for-profit projects run by cultural foundations owned by enterprises may be analyzed to help find ways to bring in several marketing measures.
This study explored the concepts, types and roles of cultural foundations and examined the facts and figures of overseas and domestic cultural foundations to seek for future developmental paths of local cultural foundations. Also, the present study identified current states and status of local cultural foundations. Further, based on the findings from case studies on the intents of establishment, organization and projects of domestic and overseas cultural foundations, each foundation's main functions, project content, organization and operation were compared and analyzed to come to a conclusion that cultural foundations suitable for local reality, characteristics and environment can develop. Cultural foundations have infinitive growth potential in the future. With non-governmental and not-for-profit roles and missions and continuous and fundamental studies on projects, cultural foundations are ultimately to realize cultural democracy and fulfill their responsibilities as specialized art organizations.