Arts-led or arts-fed? The role of the artist in Taipei’s cultural regeneration

This paper identifies and examines four key roles attributed to artists within cultural regeneration, in which they are commonly positioned as users of spaces for work and display, producers of cultural and creative content, community builders, and mascots in city branding. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with artists and cultural practitioners in Taipei, the study explores how these roles are instrumentalised through controlled access to funding and space, and argues that this form of regeneration is better understood as ‘arts-fed’ rather than ‘arts-led’. While artists benefit from increased public funding and greater opportunities to display their work, over-reliance on government support, combined with limited access to affordable workspace, constrains their autonomy as producers and imposes additional obligations linked to city branding, community building, and national aspirations for international recognition. This indicates an asymmetric relationship between the government and artists, whereby artists are positioned as instruments for advancing cultural regeneration policy objectives rather than as agents shaping the regeneration process. The concept of ‘arts-fed’ regeneration thus provides a useful framework for understanding how artists become instrumentalised, particularly in contexts where governments remain central actors in cultural development.