The project thus deals with an instrumental type of cultural production created outside traditional forms of cultural policy support and thus without the usual arm's length supposed to protect against political influence.

By an information-by-proxy strategy, agencies utilized cultural workers as a buffer between the authorities and citizens. The project argues that this strategy led to shifts between the policy areas of culture and information as artists became opinion makers and authorities outside the cultural sphere became cultural financiers. The project adopts an interdisciplinary and historical perspective with the aim of studying these shifts and the communicative ambiguities that arose between state–cultural workers–citizens.

The project contributes to research on cultural and information policy by developing an understanding of how the instrumentality of culture can be seen as a reciprocal process, where actors become dependent on each other. The project has broad societal relevance as it contributes to the understanding of policy implementation and legitimization, of historical and contemporary shifts in public opinion, and to debates on autonomous artistic practice and undue political influence, on national and Nordic levels.