Comparative interpretation of community culture

Abstract As part of a cultural institution system and subsystem of education, the Hungarian community culture comprises universal and nation specific features. It serves cultural and educational, as well as community development and organization purposes; through these it is a regular participant of national cultural and societal capital investments. The specialized activity of community culture realizes non-formal and informal learning events through cultural learning. In field specific activity it realizes non-formal and informal learning events with the help of cultural learning. Its universal features create an opportunity for comparative study in an international context. Our study is based on field specific features that allow us to identify the mission of this cultural domain: cultural broadcasting (1), community development (2), and cultural event management (3). This theoretical study aims to comparatively examine the good practices of community culture in the Carpathian-Basin. During our comparative, critical analysis we searched for the international equivalents of the institutions of community culture, also presenting the international limitations of the topic. Our main result is that some international models champion cultural value broadcasting (Bulgaria, Greece, France, Spain, Philippines, China, New-Caledonia), others support community development, education and social needs, or opportunity creation (USA, England, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Japan). We consider the complex activity and service system of the community culture in the Carpathian-Basin – especially aspects of the specific legal, institutional and human resources and the special learning forms realized in community culture: cultural learning – unique and beneficial to be learned and implemented by other nations. This feature is a unique cultural and educational activity.