Cultural Diplomacy’s Challenges: Rethinking Them Through Knowledge Brokering

This article examines why cultural diplomacy (CD) encounters operational, contextual, and relational challenges including resource misalignment, cultural difference, bureaucratic constraint, and limited mobility, and identifies gaps in knowledge flows across national, institutional, and organizational boundaries as a central mechanism. We develop a knowledge-brokering (KB) informed framework and apply thematic analysis to purposively sampled interviews, an exploratory questionnaire, and deliberations from an online symposium and focus-group discussions with UK cultural organizations in the post-Brexit/post-pandemic period. Findings indicate that cross-boundary brokering is patchy, knowledge is “sticky” at organizational interfaces, and evaluation practices remain ad hoc. We theorize KB as a linking function between intent, design, and implementation, operating as both a preventive and a coping mechanism. We then outline implications for coordination, learning, and accountability.