The era of cultural autonomy is emerging.
'Cultural autonomy' is the concept to encompass the values of local decentralization and cultural democracy. This concept means that local communities deviate from existing top-down cultural policies which descend from the central government through metropolitan cities and provinces to local cites and counties, and so produce their own cultural policies for themselves, create their own ecosystem, implement own policies, and foster their own local culture. Especially, as 'Local Culture Promotion Act' has been enacted, our country prepared a legal basis to recognize the importance and substance of local culture, which had been regarded as a beneficiary within the system of nationalistic cultural administration for a long time, as well as promote local communities' culture. So, our society could approach the era of cultural autonomy and cultural decentralization more closely.
Like this, as there occurred the era of cultural autonomy and cultural decentralization, the era needed the actors who could flexibly respond to rapidly changing culture and art environments to perform cultural autonomy and cultural decentralization. Cultural foundations came to the fore as the new organizational form for performing this era. Increasing demand for culture and art as well as the change in the environment of culture and art required professional culture and art organizations with locality and expertise coping with this era, to which cultural foundations were regarded as appropriate. Local cultural foundations were greatly increased to have systematical and financial supports, clear promotion systems, expertise, and competencies, so that they played a pivotal role in the governance of local culture.
This study closely analyzed the case of Jeonju Cultural Foundation to regard the present as the time for the re-takeoff of Jeonju Cultural Foundation. Thus, the purpose of this study is to present Jeonju Cultural Foundation's development plans for growing into a pivotal role in culture and art promotion, living culture, and cultural governance as well as a cultural platform to realize cultural autonomy.