A Study on the Improvement of Local Governments’ Youth Culture and Arts Policies

In this study, we revealed the current state of youth culture from the perspective of generation theory and sought ways to improve it by analyzing ordinances supporting youth culture and arts that are currently being actively enacted or revised. The current youth policy, which is centered around job policies, is silent on not only the issue of economic poverty but also the issue of cultural poverty among young people. In addition, as recent social issues such as hatred and generational conflict have expanded, community life is facing a crisis, and the young generation is at the center of this. As a result of taking interest in these social issues and examining the youth culture and arts support ordinances that are being actively enacted or revised recently, focusing on major local governments, we discovered that the following policy changes are necessary. First, support for youth culture and arts should focus on improving the problems of the young generation rather than focusing on community development. Second, the ordinance supporting youth culture and arts must be supplemented with provisions for improving the quality of life of young people and promoting creative activities. Third, the type of youth culture and arts activities must be changed to focus on policy participation. Therefore, this study basically emphasized that youth policy requires a change in thinking to a policy in which youth become the ‘subject’.