What is cultural policy? This time it's personal! (original) (raw)
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The politics of cultural policy
Litteraria Pragensia: Studies in Literature and …, 2009
This article addresses the roles of intellectuals in the shaping of cultural policy. Three distinct but interrelated political levels are discussed: the EU, the UK as a member state and Scotland as a stateless nation. The cultural and political space of the European Union is contradictory: it has a cultural presence but member states have full cultural competence. The EU's public sphere is fragmented, poised between regulation and federation. The member state therefore remains the principal focus for analysis of cultural policy debates. Next, a variety of theoretical positions on the intellectuals and the strategic uses of expertise in a 'knowledge society' is explored, illustrating how the cultural policy field is typically constituted. The article goes on to discuss how intellectuals in the UK have shaped government policy on the 'creative economy', underlining the importance of a New Labour 'policy generation' in taking ideas forward that have been globally influential as well as in Scotland. A discussion of stateless nationhood is the backdrop to showing how the Nationalists in power inherited their Labour-LibDem predecessors' approach to developing a new cultural institution, Creative Scotland. This underlines Scotland's deep policy dependency on creative economy ideas fashioned in London. Cultural policy, states and intellectuals 1 This article draws on 'The Politics of Cultural Policy', my inaugural lecture at the University of Glasgow, delivered on
Artists’ Voices in Cultural Policy
2018
New Directions in Cultural Policy Research encourages theoretical and empirical contributions which enrich and develop the field of cultural policy studies. Since its emergence in the 1990s in Australia and the United Kingdom and its eventual diffusion in Europe, the academic field of cultural policy studies has expanded globally as the arts and popular culture have been re-positioned by city, regional, and national governments, and international bodies, from the margins to the centre of social and economic development in both rhetoric and practice. The series invites contributions in all of the following: arts policies, the politics of culture, cultural industries policies (the 'traditional' arts such as performing and visual arts, crafts), creative industries policies (digital, social media, broadcasting and film, and advertising), urban regeneration and urban cultural policies, regional cultural policies, the politics of cultural and creative labour, the production and consumption of popular culture, arts education policies, cultural heritage and tourism policies, and the history and politics of media and communications policies. The series will reflect current and emerging concerns of the field such as, for example, cultural value, community cultural development, cultural diversity, cultural sustainability, lifestyle culture and eco-culture, planning for the intercultural city, cultural planning, and cultural citizenship.
Dilemmas in Policy Support for the Arts and Cultural Sector
Australian Journal of Public Administration, 2005
This article questions the specific challenges that the management of culture poses for government. 2 Unlike some 'public good' policy domains, such as prisons, defence or infrastructure, or benefit provisions such as unemployment, disability or health measures, the complex area of cultural policy cannot be justified in instrumental terms as an essential-or unavoidablepolicy of government. Nonetheless, the cultural lobby is an effective and indefatigable pressure on government. The area of culture is just one small component of the public agenda that governments are obliged to support. Given other pressing portfolios, why do governments continue to take an interest in culture? Moreover, recent government policies seem to be setting up problems for the future such that governments will find it hard if not impossible to extricate themselves from a problematic relationship. So, what is the hold that culture has over governments? Traditionally, the answer seemed to be a combination of boosterism and cultural capital. Governments liked to bask in the reflected glory of cultural success believing that it contributed to their legitimacy and cultural competence. The glow of elite culture was seen to rub off onto political incumbents and their regimes. But in an age of pressures on government to justify public expenditure and meet accountability regimes, cultural support continues to appear on the funding agenda and governments continue to become embroiled in debates about competing support formulae. This relates to both the nature of 'culture' and broader definitions under the banner of 'cultural policy' as well as the nature of the sector which is, at once, elitist, institutionalized, commercial, highly specialist, niche and industry-all premised on intangible nature of 'creativity'. Paradoxically, contrary to other trends in public policy, arts and cultural funding has reverted to forms of patronage as the centrepiece of broadly defined policies of access, equity and self-sufficiency. How has this policy portfolio managed to buck the trends of other domains of government attention? This article attempts to open some new ways of examining the question. 3
Cultural industries and cultural policy
International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2005
This article analyses and contextualises a variety of relationships between the cultural industries and cultural policy. A principal aim is to examine policies explicitly formulated as cultural (or creative) industries policies. What lies behind such policies? How do they relate to other kinds of cultural policy, including those more oriented towards media, communications, arts and heritage? The first section asks how the cultural industries became such an important idea in cultural policy, when those industries had been largely invisible in traditional (arts‐ and heritage‐based) policy for many decades. What changed and what drove the major changes? In the second section, we look at a number of problems and conceptual tensions arising from the new importance of the cultural industries in contemporary public policy, including problems concerning definition and scope, and the accurate mapping of the sector, but also tensions surrounding the insertion of commercial and industrial culture into cultural policy regimes characterised by legacies of romanticism and idealism. We also look at problems surrounding the academic division of labour in this area of study. We conclude by summarising some of the main contemporary challenges facing cultural policy and cultural policy studies with regard to the cultural industries. The piece also serves to introduce the contributions to a special issue of International Journal of Cultural Policy on the cultural industries and cultural policy.
CULTURAL INDUSTRIES AND PUBLIC POLICY: AN OXYMORON?
This paper re-imagines the space of the cultural industries and their governance. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first questions of definition are reviewed. In the second part the paper examines cultural policies (and by default cultural industries policies) in order to disclose the key concepts of culture that they are based upon. The final section, on governance, develops an argument that seeks to open up a space where the hybrid nature of cultural production can be addressed by policy.
The ethical dimensions of cultural policy
Originally presented at the 12th Conference on European Culture, Barcelona, October 2013. Governments and public institutions express cultural policy through language and initiatives reflecting the ideas, trends and arguments with which they wish to be associated. However, this paper investigates the premise that core establishment principles are revealed in longer term patterns of resource allocation, which may diverge from political declarations of intent. With specific reference to Great Britain, the paper examines the ethical bases of the relationship between art, the state and the public. Tracing the philosophical background to the foundation of the Arts Councils and the establishment of state patronage, it considers the social, cultural and aesthetic assumptions underpinning these developments. The continuing influence of older moral frameworks is explored through discrepancies between rhetoric and action in policy implementation. It is suggested that the principles and purposes of art in public life must be reconsidered by artists and policy makers alike if coherent future policy directions are to be generated.
Cultural Policy”: Towards a Global Survey
Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2009
The field of "cultural policy" has acquired sufficient purchase internationally to warrant a comparative global survey. This article examines questions that arise preliminary to such an endeavour. It looks first at the problems posed by the divided nature of "cultural policy" research: on the one hand policy advisory work that is essentially pragmatic, and on the other so-called "theoretical" analysis which has little or no purchase on policy-making. In both cases, key elements are missed. A way out of the quandary would be to privilege a line of inquiry that analyzes the "arts and heritage" both in relation to the institutional terms and objectives of these fields but also as components of a broader "cultural system" whose dynamics can only be properly grasped in terms of the social science or "ways of life" paradigm. Such a line of inquiry would address: the ways in which subsidized cultural practice interacts with or is impacted by social, economic and political forces; the domains of public intervention where the cultural in the broader social science sense elicits policy stances and policy action; the nature of public intervention in both categories; whether and how the objects and practices of intervention are conceptualised in a holistic way. A second set of interrogations concerns axes for the comparison of "cultural policy" trans-nationally. One possible axis is provided by different state stances with respect to Raymond Williams' categories of national aggrandizement, economic reductionism, public patronage of the arts, media regulation and the negotiated construction of cultural identity. Another avenue would be to unpack interpretations of two leading current agendas, namely "cultural diversity" and the "cultural and/or creative industries". "Cultural policy" has acquired sufficient purchase internationally for a comparative global survey of different "cultural policy" stances and measures to appear both feasible and timely. The reflections that follow are prolegomena to such an endeavour, some of the necessary preliminaries to a systematic inquiry into "cultural policy" worldwide. At the outset, or even before the outset, two sets of issues should concern us. Both deeply influence the pertinence and usability of the literature one might have recourse to in carrying out such an ambitious project, short of carrying out an ethnographical inquiry in x number of selected or representative countries. First, the divided nature of research on "cultural policy": on the one hand policy advisory work that concerns itself little with higher ends and values, and on the other socalled "theoretical" analysis which has little or no purchase on policy-making. Could a third party deploy conceptual tools that could bridge the divide and if so how? The second set of interrogations concerns ways of comparing "cultural policy" trans-nationally. I shall suggest several axes of differentiation that appear relevant, but only tentatively, as I have yet to settle on an overarching analytical framework.
Re-visioning arts and cultural policy: current impasses and future directions
2007
Professor Wanna has produced around 17 books including two national text books on policy and public management. He has produced a number of research-based studies on budgeting and financial management including: Budgetary Management and Control (1990); Managing Public Expenditure (2000), From Accounting to Accountability (2001) and, most recently, Controlling Public Expenditure (2003). He has just completed a study of state level leadership covering all the state and territory leaders-entitled Yes Premier: Labor leadership in Australia's states and territories-and has edited a book on Westminster Legacies in Asia and the Pacific-Westminster Legacies: Democracy and responsible government in Asia and the Pacific. He was a chief investigator in a major Australian Research Council funded study of the Future of Governance in Australia (1999-2001) involving Griffith and the ANU. His research interests include Australian and comparative politics, public expenditure and budgeting, and government-business relations. He also writes on Australian politics in newspapers such as The Australian, Courier-Mail and The Canberra Times and has been a regular state political commentator on ABC radio and TV. Table of Contents About the Author ix Acknowledgements xi Foreword xiii Abbreviations and Acronyms xvii Chapter 1. The Conceptual ambivalence of art and culture 1 Chapter 2. Historical phases in arts and cultural policy-making in Australia 7 Chapter 3. The convergence of arts and cultural policy Chapter 4. International trends in arts and cultural production and consumption Chapter 5. How can cultural sub-sectors respond? Three indicative case studies Chapter 6. Managing creativity and cultivating culture Bibliography Appendix A. Typology of artforms by characteristics of sector Appendix B. Key moments in Australian arts and cultural policy development Appendix C. Models of cultural policy Appendix D. Definitions of cultural policy Appendix E. The objectives of cultural policy Appendix F. Government expenditure (Commonwealth, state and local) on the arts in Australia ($ million
Cultural policy is concerned with creating a vibrant cultural life where every citizen has access to diverse cultural expression, where artists find ample opportunities to connect to audiences, where artistic innovation is frequent and pervasive, and where art and culture serve to advance a more just and inclusive society. This chapter analyzes how sociological research, theories, and methodologies could inform cultural policy and broaden understanding of how arts and culture gets produced, distributed, and consumed by individuals and communities. The authors consider five questions that illustrate sociology’s potential contributions to a vibrant arts and culture ecosystem, including how to support and sustain 1) arts participation; 2) artists’ careers; 3) freedom of expression; 4) diverse cultural institutions; and 5) robust markets for exchange. Ultimately, cultural policy will succeed or fail based on how well it takes into account the complex social and human dynamics that shape how culture moves through the world as well as how people move through the world with culture.