'A vibrant, diverse and inspiring cultural life to which citizens of all local communities and subcultures have access and can connect with, makes up a substantial part of the social fabric that determines functioning and attractive living localities-the quality of life that a place offers'. The topic of this paper is the insight in the field of cultural participation and consumption; more concretely it focuses on the levels of participation and consumption development in four countries: Serbia, Croatia, Sweden and the Netherlands. The first two countries have achieved rather similar stages throughout history, and consequently, many areas of cultural policy are structured in the same way and these countries share rather low level of development due to a long-standing and severe economic and political turbulences they have been facing. As a result, participation and consumption of culture have been put aside, as peoples of both countries were concentrated on bare survival. Today, conditions are slightly changed, but there are still many obstacles that these countries must try to overcome. Intersectorial connections, integration of culture and arts in regular education, programmes aimed at developing the audiences are only some of the tasks that these countries should carry out in times to come. On the other hand, Sweden and the Netherlands are known for high standards of life, welfare and prosperity, and thus their cultural practices have been supreme. In terms of the area of cultural policy in focus of this paper, Sweden and the Netherlands are at the top of European countries, and thus their methods are used as examples for the previously mentioned countries to look up to. The only identified issue is relatively low interest of young population in traditional forms. Still, the possibility of interconnecting multimedia with traditional culture might be solution to this problem.
