Financialization and cultural financial literacy in cultural management education

The present article examines the structural asymmetry between the massive scalability of global financialization and the comparatively limited expansion of cultural funding mechanisms. While financial assets and valuation systems have expanded dramatically over recent decades, funding of cultural and creative industries (CCIs) continues to operate within incremental financing capacities. We argue that this divergence reflects not simply a shortage of resources, but a broader disconnection between modern financial accumulation processes and the mechanisms through which culture is financed. Furthermore, there is an asymmetry of the impact of financialization across cultural sectors, where media-oriented and other creative activities attract disproportionately greater financial engagement than core cultural activities. The paper then explores the implications of these developments for cultural management education. Drawing on discussions of cultural management curricula, interdisciplinarity, and academic territoriality, we argue that existing educational approaches remain insufficiently prepared to address financial valuation processes and persistent speculative dynamics driven by behavioral expectations of market participants. As a result, the present article proposes the concept of cultural financial literacy as an emerging field and potential course within cultural management education. Distinct from purely technical finance training, cultural financial literacy is conceptualized as a strategic capacity enabling cultural managers to understand and engage more effectively with financial agents while preserving the cultural value of core cultural activities. An important conclusion of the present article is that cultural management education can transform to develop the educational and institutional capacities required to engage strategically with increasingly financialized structures and their agents.