ABSTRACT
Greece has suffered extensively from a financial crisis which led to changes in structures and institutions. It has also profoundly affected the domain of culture, putting it in a state of flux and in a long and continuous state of reformation and transformation. This chapter discusses the reaction of the cultural sector to the crisis, focusing on the areas of funding and infrastructure, creative conditions and cultural production, audiences, and arts education. It highlights in what way the Greek cultural landscape has developed and the changes that have taken place such as the new forms of cultural production, and the development of synergies and collaborations. It identifies private institutions and the establishment of bottom-up cultural initiatives as the new actors introduced to the Greek cultural policy agenda and discusses their role, substituting the State in the provision of culture for the citizens. The chapter brings to the fore how the absence of the State from many areas of cultural life provided an opportunity to break away from established perceptions of culture and led to the development of new cultural policy paradigms as well as to new, more inclusive forms of cultural production and cultural experience.
