Cultural diplomacy in dialogue: A conversation with Ian Thomas on cultural relations,soft power,and evidence

Abstract

This editorial conversation examines how cultural diplomacy is defined, practised and evidenced through a dialogue with Ian Thomas (Research and Evaluation Lead for Global Arts, British Council). It traces the conceptual and practical slippages between cultural relations, cultural diplomacy and soft power, and considers how these shape what can be credibly claimed and measured. Thomas situates the British Council's work along a continuum shaped by its arm's-length status, which underpins credibility and long-term trust-building while also accommodating programmes that intersect with bilateral agendas and diplomatic infrastructures. The accompanying commentary locates these reflections within wider debates on cultural policy instrumentalism, dialogic diplomacy and the conceptual limits of soft power, arguing that an international perspective is both an epistemic requirement and a practical condition for meaningful cultural diplomacy. The piece concludes by underscoring dialogue and learning cultures within and across institutions and national borders as central to cultural diplomacy's legitimacy and impact.

Keywords

cultural diplomacy cultural relations soft power British Council evaluation international cultural policy

Introduction

A widely used starting point defines ‘cultural diplomacy as the exchange of ideas, information, values, traditions, and other aspects of culture in order to foster mutual understanding between peoples and nations’ (Cummings, 2003: 1). Yet closer examination shows that cultural diplomacy is interpreted in markedly different ways by scholars, policymakers, and cultural practitioners across national contexts. Is it primarily a tool for advancing national interests abroad, or a process of fostering mutual understanding across cultures? Is it led by governments, or by non-state actors, including cultural organisations and cultural practitioners? In practice, it frequently straddles both, and these blurred boundaries raise persistent questions about values, influence, and how impact might be evidenced. In addition, cultural diplomacy is increasingly interpreted, negotiated, and practised beyond the Euro-Atlantic model, demanding an international perspective and a comparative framework.

To explore these issues and trends, we spoke with Ian Thomas, Research and Evaluation Lead for Global Arts at the British Council, as part of this special issue on Cultural Diplomacy: Dialogues, Values and Discourses. Thomas brings a decade of experience developing evidence frameworks for the British Council's international arts programmes. All reflections attributed to Thomas in this conversation are offered in his personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of the British Council. Thomas's comments have been edited for clarity. Bringing these strands together, this conversation suggests that cultural diplomacy is sustained not only through cross-cultural exchange, but also through ongoing dialogue among scholars and practitioners, in which definitions, values, and evidence are continually negotiated. The issues examined in this conversation are not confined to the UK or the British Council. They resonate across many national contexts in which comparable international cultural institutes, such as the Goethe-Institut and the Institut Français among many others, navigate similar tensions between credibility, strategy, and evidencing impact.

The British Council, the UK's flagship international cultural institution, occupies a unique space between government and international civil society. Founded in 1934 to promote cultural exchange, it operates as an arm's length body: formally independent of direct government control, though largely funded by it. The arm's length status is meant to ensure credibility and trust, allowing cultural activities to be conducted with some distance from political agendas. At the same time, the Council's work aligns with Britain's foreign policy goals of fostering influence and goodwill abroad. This conversation therefore asks how the organisation balances these dual identities of cultural relations (long-term, people-to-people engagement) and cultural diplomacy (the strategic use of culture in the pursuit of national interests), and how the Council positions itself within a wider landscape of international cultural institutions.

Thomas reflects on how the British Council negotiates the conceptual and definitional slippages between cultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and soft power. The discussion foregrounds three interlocking concerns: the arm's length principle as a condition of credibility and trust; the continuum of practice that complicates neat definitional boundaries; and the methodology of evaluation in a field characterised by long time horizons, indirect effects, and contested value claims. All these themes converge on a familiar point of friction: differences in how cultural diplomacy is defined across agencies, national contexts, and scholarly traditions.

Definitions

The question of definition is compounded by a persistent terminological instability in both scholarship and practice. Zhu (2025) maps the overlaps and interrelations among cultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and adjacent terms (including soft power and propaganda), noting that definitions frequently hinge on two recurring parameters: the degree of government presence and whether communication is conceived as one-way projection or two-way exchange. International cultural institutions such as the British Council and Germany's Goethe-Institut typically foreground reciprocity and mutual understanding under the concept of cultural relations, whereas cultural diplomacy and soft power are often associated with more strategic, instrumental logics. Because there is no universally agreed definition of these terms, the conceptual ambiguity contributes to divergent practices but also enables flexibility in approaches.

Because the British Council frames its mission primarily in terms of cultural relations rather than cultural diplomacy, we sought to understand the rationale for this choice and how it shapes the Council's work in practice. We asked Ian Thomas to distinguish the two concepts and to position the British Council's work within the wider debate.

Thomas: I tend to think of it like a Venn diagram—the boundaries are quite blurred. Broadly, cultural relations is about mutual understanding and long-term relationships built on reciprocity. It involves non-state actors—civil society, arts organisations, NGOs—working together in a co-creative way. The emphasis is on trust-building and mutual benefit over a sustained period. Cultural relations work can be independent of government, at arm's length, and that's very much the approach the British Council and our peers like the Goethe-Institut take. The British Council has been doing this for 90 years now. It's a slow-burn process of building trust through education, English language, arts and culture.

By contrast, cultural diplomacy is more about advancing national interests through cultural influence. It's typically state to state, government-led, and more strategic or instrumental in intent. Cultural diplomacy programs tend to be shorter-term, tied to foreign policy objectives, and directed by governments, for example, through embassies or ministries. So, one could say cultural diplomacy is culture as a tool of diplomacy, whereas cultural relations is diplomacy through culture as a two-way relationship. There is overlap. They’re not black and white categories, but broadly, one operates at the government level with a shorter horizon, and the other at the people-to-people level with a longer horizon.

Thomas's reflection on the terms mirrors the mainstream arguments in academic discussions, which commonly centres on two parameters in academic publications: the degree of government presence and communication options (Zhu, 2025). Cultural relations is frequently framed as comparatively neutral and comprehensive, while cultural diplomacy is often characterised as more directly connected to governmental interests and objectives (Arndt, 2005; Mitchell, 2015). Mulcahy (1999) argues that, although government presence in cultural diplomacy should be acknowledged, the conduct of cultural diplomacy ought not to be politicised. This suggests that cultural diplomacy should not be reduced to a term that merely reflects a governmental agenda but should instead be understood as a more capacious concept that encompasses the interests and involvement of multiple actors.

Communication options also help distinguish methods and logics of practice. Nation branding initiatives and mega-events with short-term objectives are often associated with one-way, promotional communication (Anholt, 2007; Leonard et al., 2002), whereas longer term and recurring activities, such as educational exchanges and sustained cultural partnerships, are more commonly understood as enabling two-way communication, listening, and mutual learning (Cull, 2009; Melissen, 2005). The US Fulbright Programme is a useful example of long-term educational exchanges.

Against this backdrop, we asked whether, in practice, the British Council might be understood as working across both cultural relations and cultural diplomacy.

Thomas : Yes, absolutely. Our work really runs along a continuum from cultural relations through to cultural diplomacy. Some programmes sit firmly on the cultural relations end. For example, our heritage protection projects in the Middle East and Africa, protecting cultural heritage at risk due to conflict or climate change, are very much about long-term relationship-building and local partnerships. Those are cultural relations in nature. On the other end, we have initiatives like Seasons of Culture, which are major festival exchanges between the UK and another country. These still follow a cultural relations approach but involve closer collaboration with UK embassies, host governments and foreign ministries. Those seasons have a more diplomatic flavour. They might be more tied into official bilateral agendas. So, within the British Council, you can picture a spectrum: on one end, pure cultural relations; on the other, cultural diplomacy, with many projects blending elements of both.

‘Bilateral agendas’, mentioned by Thomas, refers to the way certain programmes are explicitly situated within and sometimes designed to advance government interests. This is more visible in some initiatives (notably Seasons of Culture) than in others, because Seasons typically operate as high-profile platforms co-endorsed by governments and delivered alongside embassies, foreign ministries, and other official partners. In this sense, the programme functions as a cultural interface for wider bilateral objectives, translating strategic goals into sectoral opportunities for artists, cultural organisations, and audiences.

For example, the UK/Brazil 2025 Season is framed as an official collaboration between the two governments, oriented towards strengthening the bilateral relationship through cultural exchange and partnership. The UK/Poland 2025 Season, meanwhile, foregrounds opportunities for cultural leaders and the next generation of artists, aligning with the British Council's wider emphasis on building relationships with the ‘next generation’ in the region (British Council, 2019: 2). The same strategic document differentiates priorities by geography, with ‘stability and security’ more explicitly emphasised in parts of the Middle East and Africa (British Council, 2019: 2). Together these examples illustrate how bilateral agendas do not replace the relational logic of cultural work, but shape its framing, partnerships, and expectations in particular programme contexts.

Independence and influence: the arm's length principle

In the broad range of activities at the British Council, as Thomas indicates, the government's involvement varies from programme to programme, reflecting the blurred boundaries between cultural relations and cultural diplomacy that appear in academic discussion. The flexibility in programming is largely attributed to the Council's arm's length status.

In cultural policy, the arm's length principle refers to a governance arrangement in which elected government provides public funds and sets broad objectives, but delegates decisions about artistic content and grant allocation to quasi-independent bodies (typically an arts council). It is often operated through peer-assessment processes, to protect artistic autonomy and to buffer both artists and ministers from direct political influence (Landry and Matarasso, 1999; Madden, 2009; Quinn, 1997). The principle also raises concerns about whether and where this boundary holds when governments navigate through priorities, targets, or funding conditions. The debate over government influence versus independence in the arm's length principle echoes the tension between the two concepts discussed above: cultural relations and cultural diplomacy. Cultural diplomacy or cultural relations, we argue, is an extension of domestic cultural policymaking. To explore how the arm's length principle is applied in cross-national cultural activities, we asked for a detailed explanation of what it means for the British Council to be an arm's length agency and why it matters.

Thomas: The arm's-length principle basically means we have operational independence from direct government control, even though we receive public funding. In practice, most of our arts and culture programmes are under this arm's-length status. We have our own charter and independent governance. There may be certain grants or contracts for specific projects, for example, partnerships with the EU or UNESCO, but the vast majority of our core funding comes via that arm's-length arrangement with the UK government. This gives us a degree of flexibility. We do report back to government on broad outcomes, and we align with high-level objectives, but we aren’t micromanaged on how to deliver programs.

That independence is crucial. It allows us to respond to local needs and contexts rather than having everything dictated by the government. For instance, our arts programming in, say, Nigeria or Turkey can be tailored to the cultural context and needs there, rather than being a top-down exercise. The arm's-length setup lends credibility too. Partners overseas know we’re not simply a political arm of the embassy, even though we ultimately aim to create mutual benefit for the UK and other countries.

To contextualise the discussion above, it is helpful to note that the British Council carries multiple formal identities within the UK's institutional and legal architecture. This matters beyond the British case: the Council offers a useful lens for cultural diplomacy scholarship because it makes visible how credibility, autonomy, and state strategy are co-produced through institutional design, funding arrangements, and governance classifications. It also illustrates the level of complexities of cultural diplomacy ecosystem which is often simplified in the literature.

The British Council was incorporated by Royal Charter on 7 October 1940. The Charter sets out its charitable objects and provides the constitutional basis for its governance (Charity Commission for England and Wales, n.d.). Over time, this arm's length body has also accumulated multiple official classifications. Administratively, it is treated as an executive non-departmental public body with a sponsoring department in the UK government (previously Foreign and Commonwealth Office, now the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office) (Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 2019). In economic statistics, the Office for National Statistics classifies the British Council as a public non-financial corporation because it is controlled by the central government yet derives more than 50 per cent of its income from the sale of goods and services, mainly in the form of English education (Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 2019). These overlapping statuses can complicate a single narrative of what the organisation is, but can also generate practical benefits, ranging from credibility and prestige in international settings to financial advantages such as tax treatment in some jurisdictions (ibid.).

The arm's length principle has long been a hallmark of British cultural policy and is widely used and discussed in other countries including the United States. Nonetheless, some observers argue that the British Council's credibility also stems from its connection to the UK government. In other words, people in other countries sometimes assume the Council represents the British government, which can have the effect of enhancing its authority. We therefore see a unique challenge: the Council must appear neutral enough to be trusted, yet official enough to carry weight. Considering this contrast, we asked Thomas about another word that often enters the conversation: soft power.

Soft power

The term soft power has become increasingly popular in recent years, in policy and academic circles alike. Joseph Nye's formulation is often taken as the starting point: he defines soft power as ‘the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payment’ (Nye, 2004: ix), drawing on sources such as a country's culture, political values, and foreign policies. We asked Thomas how he sees soft power in relation to cultural relations and cultural diplomacy, and whether the rise of the soft power narrative has helped the Council's work or created misconceptions.

Thomas: Soft power is related, but distinct from what we’ve been discussing. If cultural relations is rooted in mutual exchange, soft power is more about a country projecting its narrative to shape perceptions. It's essentially storytelling. A nation leverages various assets—its culture, values, education, sports, policies—to make itself attractive and influential to others. The goal is to create an image or appeal that opens doors internationally. So in that sense, soft power is a bit more one-directional than cultural relations. It's a country telling its story, hoping others will find it compelling.

Now, the boundaries between soft power, cultural diplomacy, and cultural relations are blurry—these concepts overlap. Soft power can be an outcome of doing good cultural relations work. For example, people liking the UK more because of a great cultural exchange they experience. But I’d stress that soft power itself is not an outcome you deliver. It's an enabling process. It creates an environment in which certain outcomes become more likely. For instance, if a country builds a positive image and trust, which we call soft power, that makes it easier to negotiate agreements or attract students and investments down the line. But soft power is a means to an end, not the end in itself.

Building on Thomas's argument that soft power functions primarily as an enabling process rather than an endpoint, we turned to the political and practical consequences of the concept's growing prominence. In the UK, the establishment of a Soft Power Council and the increased policy salience of soft power raise a further question: has this framing helped mobilise support and resources for cultural relations, or does it risk oversimplifying relational work by privileging short-term visibility over reciprocity and long-term trust?

Ian Thomas: There's no question that the soft power narrative has raised the profile of our work. It's given a kind of clarity and focus at the political level. Ten years ago, cultural relations might have been seen as a bit hard to pin down. But talk about soft power and suddenly people in government pay attention. In the UK, we now have a Soft Power Council and a defined soft power strategy that shows it's on the agenda. I’d say this isn’t a bad thing. It has helped secure funding and high-level buy-in by framing cultural initiatives as part of a national strategy. And it's prompted useful conversations about what soft power is and how to use it or not use it effectively.

That said, we have to be careful. Soft power shouldn’t overshadow the core values of cultural relations. If everything is justified only in terms of enhancing our soft power, there's a risk of drifting into a purely instrumental mindset. It can bias the agenda towards what makes us look good, rather than what genuinely builds mutual understanding. We try to avoid that trap by remembering that trust and relationships are the foundation. Soft power will flow naturally if we get those right. In discussions, we often circle back to clarifying these terms—what exactly do we mean by cultural relations, cultural diplomacy, soft power—because there's still some conceptual fuzziness out there. Getting that clarity is important so that we don’t lose sight of our long-term purpose in pursuit of short-term image gains.

Thomas's response represents a nuanced view in which soft power is real and important, but it is only a part of the picture, not the whole. It also reflects a common sentiment in the field that cross-national cultural work should not be reduced to a tool, and its intrinsic values are not subordinate to its instrumental benefits. In brief, this tension is framed through (a) critiques of cultural policy instrumentalism (Belfiore and Bennett, 2008; Gray, 2007; Holden, 2006), (b) debates over soft power's conceptual slippage among resources, strategies, and effects, and its entanglement with discursive forms of power (Hayden, 2012; Mattern, 2005; Nye, 2004), and (c) arguments that credibility and trust depend on dialogic, reciprocal engagement, which can sit uneasily with one-way branding and metric-driven strategies (Cull, 2009; Melissen, 2005; Pamment, 2013).

Evidence and evaluation

What is still missing from the discussion so far is evidence of impact: If cultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and soft power overlap in practice, and if their value claims often rest on long-term, relational, and indirect effects, then questions of what counts as impact and how it can be evidenced become unavoidable. Such evidence also matters beyond the British Council, because cultural diplomacy is frequently asked to justify public expenditure and strategic claims in increasingly result-oriented policy environments. We therefore put these questions to Thomas, asking how the British Council has navigated evaluation pressures, developed credible evidence frameworks, and sought to capture outcomes associated with both cultural relations and cultural diplomacy.

Thomas: You’ve hit on one of our greatest challenges. The impacts in this field are typically long-term, diffuse, and non-linear. A cultural relations approach might plant seeds that only bear fruit many years later. So, we can’t just do a one-off evaluation right after an event and declare victory. We need multi-year evidence frameworks. In my view, to truly capture the outcomes, we have to track projects over the medium to long-term, often across multiple countries, and see what those relationships and connections enable over time.

For example, if we run a Season of Culture between the UK and another country for a year, we’ll evaluate the immediate outcomes such as number of collaborations, audience reach, and feedback. But the bigger question is: What happened in the years after? Did the partnerships we sparked lead to further artistic collaborations or new projects? Did participants continue to work together or support each other? Is there a halo effect where trust and mutual understanding continue to grow even after the official programme ended? Capturing that residual impact is critical. It means following up, doing longitudinal studies or tracer surveys several years down the line, not just at project close.

So, the kind of evidence we consider strongest is longitudinal, with multiple data points over time, combined with robust qualitative insight. We’re talking about having credible baseline and follow-up measures. For example, surveys on perceptions, interviews with participants, and sufficient sample sizes to be confident in the findings.

Thomas's response points to a unique evaluation strategy at the British Council, combining mixed methods with both longitudinal and programme-level evidence, whereas many countries and their cultural diplomacy agencies rely on one-off post-event assessments. When we asked for concrete tools and outputs, two instruments stood out. The first is the Global Perceptions Survey, which tracks indices such as favourability, trust, and interest in UK arts and education among young people (typically aged 18–34) across the G20 and other countries. In effect, it seeks to convert the intangible aspects of cultural relations impact into measurable longitudinal indicators that can be monitored over time. The second comprises project-specific evaluations and research: the Council commissions external evaluators across different country contexts and publishes final reports. As Thomas emphasised, this transparency serves a dual purpose: it contributes to the wider research community by making findings available for reuse and critique, and it strengthens organisational learning by holding the Council accountable to what the evidence shows.

Global perspectives: comparing approaches

As one among many cultural relations and cultural diplomacy institutions, the British Council is both a comparator and a case in its own right. We therefore asked how the organisation understands its position within this wider ecology of cultural institutes, whether it has undertaken comparative research to learn from peers, and how Thomas interprets global variation in cultural diplomacy practice.

Thomas: Yes, we’ve done some very interesting comparative work recently. We commissioned a couple of studies from an external research firm examine how other nations’ organisations operate. It wasn’t an exhaustive global review, but rather a snapshot of a few comparators. For example, we looked at the Japan Foundation and Japan House, the Goethe-Institut, and the Institut Français, among others, to see how they’re funded, what their focus areas are, and how they deliver their cultural relations or diplomacy missions.

It's only been two reports so far, so it's still a relatively small sample, but it's starting to answer some of those questions. There are different approaches globally and different understandings globally, all responding to different contexts, opportunities, rationales, and challenges. So yes, there's a healthy diversity of approaches.

Thomas’ response highlights that there is no one-size-fits-all model and echoes the early discussion on the importance of local contexts. Despite these contextual and institutional differences, common trends also emerge across global research: organisations face similar questions about demonstrating impact, responding to digital change, and balancing intrinsic and instrumental goals. Strikingly, even where approaches diverge, many intended outcomes are comparable across settings, for example, increased mutual understanding, improved bilateral relations, and greater public appreciation of foreign cultures. In addition, some organisations are increasingly foregrounding themes such as social inclusion or climate change in their cultural programming, topics that may not have been treated as so-called traditional cultural diplomacy in earlier periods (Faucher and Zhu, 2025). This suggests a convergence of global challenges that is reshaping cultural engagement strategies.

One key takeaway from this comparative work, Thomas noted, is that sharpening definitions (cultural relations, cultural diplomacy, soft power) can support a shared vocabulary, while the how-to-do-it will necessarily differ by context. For instance, the way a cultural institute operates in Brazil will differ from how it operates in Egypt or Korea, because the ecosystem including the local partners, audience needs, and diplomatic environment, varies substantially.

Curiosity and willingness

To conclude our discussion of evaluation and evidence, we asked what, over the past 3–5 years, has most shaped the British Council's work, with a particular focus on evaluation. Thomas's answer was surprising.

Thomas: One of the key things is the willingness to learn and be curious. There hasn’t been pushback about doing evaluation or research in this space; rather, there's been real curiosity about the evidence base; its strength, how we can improve it, and which tools, methods, and approaches are most relevant and applicable. So, I think there's been a healthy conversation, a healthy debate, and a healthy curiosity. We haven’t got all the answers. We’re still on that journey.

As researchers engaged in questions of cultural diplomacy, we recognise this sentiment. In conversations with colleagues, formal and informal, we have increasingly sensed a shared commitment to tackling the same methodological and conceptual problems. Openness about both successes and failures has helped to cultivate a learning culture and, in turn, to mature the field. If cultural diplomacy is premised on dialogue, then the dialogue with peers that enables knowledge exchange is essential to unlocking its potential.

International perspective

The final part of our conversation turned to advice for early-career practitioners and researchers and for anyone trying to make sense of this rapidly developing field. Thomas returned repeatedly to the importance of an international perspective:

Ian Thomas: Not just from a UK perspective, or a Europe perspective. Some of the most fascinating conversations I’ve been involved in over the past few years have been, for example, in Latin America, where there are a range of different perspectives on cultural diplomacy: how it's used, and even what it is. So, be curious, have a learning mentality, but also have an international perspective, because there are rich and genuinely different perspectives out there. You might agree or disagree with them, but having those conversations, debates, and dialogues is what's so fascinating about this interdisciplinary field. It's still emerging; it hasn’t got all the answers, and it hasn’t finished its thinking and that's what's exciting.

International perspective here is more than a professional virtue. It is an epistemic and methodological requirement. Scholarship increasingly cautions against treating cultural diplomacy as a single, Euro-Atlantic model that can simply be transferred elsewhere, calling instead for comparative and context-sensitive accounts that recognise multiple histories, institutions, and value frameworks (Ang, Isar & Mar, 2015; Zhu and Paquette, 2025). For evaluation, the implication is direct: if outcomes such as trust and legitimacy are locally constituted and politically situated, then evidence frameworks must be designed with international partners, attentive to diverse meanings and institutional ecosystems, and cautious about imposing universal indicators. In that sense, Thomas's emphasis on dialogue between cultures, but also among researchers and practitioners across countries, echoes the central theme of this special issue: cultural diplomacy as an ongoing practice of conversation, in which definitions, values, and evidence are continuously negotiated.

Conclusion: toward a culture of dialogue and learning

From this conversation, we summarise four linked propositions. First, while the terms cultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and soft power remain conceptually unsettled, practitioners often operate across a continuum that includes practice across all three areas. The task is not to eliminate ambiguity, but to be explicit about values, mechanisms, and operating contexts. Second, the organisational arrangement such as the British Council's arm's length positioning matters because credibility and trust depend on being sufficiently autonomous to engage locally while remaining legible within wider diplomatic ecosystems. Third, soft power is best treated as an enabling condition: an effect of long-term relational work rather than a deliverable in its own right, and its political usefulness should not crowd out reciprocity or co-creation among governments and non-state actors in both home and foreign countries.

Finally, the evidence challenge is also an opportunity: moving from short-term reporting towards multi-year, mixed method approaches from longitudinal perception data to programme-level evaluation, supports a learning culture in which what works and what does not can be debated openly. Thomas's closing emphasis on international perspective reinforces the wider argument of this special issue: cultural diplomacy is sustained not only through cross-cultural exchange, but through ongoing dialogue among scholars and practitioners, in which definitions, values, and evidence are continuously negotiated.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Biyun Zhu

Jonathan Paquette

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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