A PART TO PLAY?

Abstract

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was established within months of Labour’s 1997 election victory. From the outset, it intended to ensure the effective delivery of government objectives across its sectors. DCMS’s modus operandi was predicated on the assumption that there is an implicit, highly determined and linear relationship between its funding, its policies, their implementation and outcomes. However, a series of recent statements by DCMS’s ministers suggest that this paradigm, such as it is, has come to be recognised as flawed. Given the burgeoning of current cultural policy research (not least within academia), this article considers whether, on the basis of its current form, it might have anything to contribute to solving DCMS’s dilemmas. In doing so, it examines the development of current cultural policy under Labour; the nature of the conceptual inconsistencies identified; the type of cultural policy research currently being undertaken; and the nature of the relationship between government cultural agencies and external, independent researchers.

KEYWORDS:

• research
• cultural policy
• New Labour
• Department for Culture, Media and Sport
• government
• evidence

Notes

1. I am grateful to Moira Goatley and Delis Aston, Analytical Services, DCMS, for giving me sight of this internal document.

2. In its paper, Modernising Government, the Cabinet Office defined “modernisation” as a “long‐term programme”, which is central to the government’s programme of “renewal and reform”, and whose purpose is to “make life better for people and businesses” (Cabinet Office, 1999).

3. For DCMS’s archive of publications see http://www.culture.gov.uk/global/publications/ (accessed 1 June 2005).

4. This theme was subsequently explored by Smith (1998) and informed the work of Policy Action Team 10 (1999; DCMS 2001b) and DCMS more generally (as, e.g., in DCMS 2001c).

5. References to the biennial spending reviews per se tend not to appear in DCMS’s annual reports. In addition to DCMS (1998a), the only document available that describes the department’s response to a spending review is DCMS (2002), which sets out how the capital allocated in the 2002 Spending Review (covering 2003/04–2005/06) will be spent.

6. I take this to be synonymous with the strategic framework illustrated (DCMS 2003b)

7. Following on from the arts and museums, a wide‐ranging reform of the historical environment agencies is now underway (DCMS 2005, p. 16).

8. Bechoffer et al.’s (2001) discussion about the dynamics of social science research exploitation is of particular relevance here.

9. My working definition of “think tank” is an organisation that carries out research and makes policy recommendations concerning current social and public issues, and which may be non‐profit‐making. They may not necessarily be independent, and some are associated with performing a public relations role by serving political parties and generating results that serve the advocacy goals of their sponsors. See, for instance, http://disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Think_tanks (accessed 19 October 2004).

10. This category covers such baseline statistics (as provided by Selwood (2001), cited in DCMS (2003a)), as well as “ground clearing” research intended to describe the situation being addressed by strategic developments or funding schemes. For the sake of comprehensiveness, these often take the form of meta‐analyses (for example, Jermyn 2001; Reeves 2002; Wavell et al. 2002).

11. These are rarely made public beyond three‐year plans; exceptions include Hewison (2000) and Henley Centre for Forecasting (1995, 2000).

12. ACE’s description of its research can be found at: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/aboutus/research.php (accessed 20 July 2004); see also Hutton et al. (2004). Its guidance, toolkits and support are designed to assist artists (e.g. Moriarty 2003) and other “cultural workers”, particularly those in local authorities. This function is common to DCMS (2000; DCMS/Deloitte & Touche/Lord Cultural Resources and Planning, 2000; DCMS/ERCC 2002a; 2002b) and MLA (2004), and such local authority bodies as the Local Government Association (Coalter 2001a, 2001b; Allison 2001); Health Education Authority (1999); and the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management (ILAM 1999).

13. MLA has, rather confusingly, distinguished between research and evidence. Its “evidence activities” are divided between its statistics and its impact evaluation programmes (http://www.mla.gov.uk/information/evidence/00ev.asp (accessed 20 July 2004)). MLA (2004) describes the future proposed for its research.

14. See also Hutton and Fenn (2003).

15. IPPR was formed in 1986, in the wake of Labour’s second successive election defeat, to act as “a dynamic, independent catalyst for progressive thinking on the centre‐left”. It claims to have contributed to a considerable range of New Labour policies (http://www.ippr.org.uk/about/ (accessed 10 August 2004)).

16. DCMS has, itself, recommended the establishment of a DCMS research centre (DCMS 2003a, p. 15).

17. The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is carried out periodically to assess the quality of research in the United Kingdom and to inform the selective distribution of public funds for research by the four British higher education funding bodies (see: http://www.rae.ac.uk/default.htm (accessed 17 October 2004)).

18. ESRC’s research database contains summary details of all ESRC‐funded research since 1985 and their associated publications and products (see: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/esrccontent/ourresearch/regard_intro.asp (accessed 25 October 2004)). For the sake of comparisons, an example of a funded cultural policy project is Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion: A Critical Investigation (see Bennett & Savage 2004). An example of an AHRB‐funded piece of cultural policy research is The Meanings of the New Millennium Experience (the outputs of which include McGuigan & Gilmore 2001, 2002).

19. See: http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/awards (accessed 20 July 2004). Exceptions include the AHRB/ACE Fellowships in Impact Assessment launched in 2003. These are intended to develop and promote better methodologies for the evaluation of socio‐economic impacts; improve the expertise and capacity to undertake impact evaluations; and enable the concept of impact evaluation to be embedded within the core work of their respective sectors (http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/news/news_pr/2003/ahrb_unveils_new_fellowship_scheme.asp (accessed 12 July 2004)).

20. Correspondence with Faye Auty, AHRB, 4 May 2004.

21. Exceptions include detailed examinations of the UK lottery (Martin‐Doyle 1995; Evans 1997); funding initiatives such as Year of the Visual Arts (Bailey 2000) and Year of the Artist (Stevens 2002); Arts Council England’s New Audiences scheme (Taylor et al. 2000); and of the Millennium Dome (McGuigan & Gilmore 2001, 2002).

22. See: http://www.jcpsg.ac.uk/transpar/index.htm (accessed 1 June 2005).

23. Examples include the Unit for Arts and Offenders, University of Manchester (Hughes, in preparation) for ACE; the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, University of Leicester (Hooper‐Greenhill & Moussouri 2002) for MLA; and the Centre for Leisure and Tourism Studies, University of North London (Evans & White 1996; White & Evans 1998) and London Metropolitan University (Evans et al. 2003) for DCMS.

24. Examples include examinations of the distribution of lottery funding by Sheffield Hallam University (Gore et al. 1999, 2000) and the collection of data on schools participating in education programmes (Hooper‐Greenhill et al. 2004). Consortiums established to work on new data collection systems may also include academics (e.g., DCMS /ERCC 2002a, b).

25. Examples include the collation of data on the creative industries by the Department of Arts Policy and Management, City University (DCMS 2001a); assessing the robustness of evaluations of social inclusion projects (Centre for Leisure and Sport Research, 2002) for DCMS; the re‐analysis of existing data sets by the Loughborough, Westminster (Wright et al. 2001) and Surrey (Sturgis & Jackson 2003) universities for Resource.

26. Self‐published research reports include, e.g., Pratt (1997) by LSE; Ackrill and Ackrill (2000) and Kawashima (2000), both by the Centre for the Study of Cultural Policy, University of Warwick; and those by the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, University of Leicester (http://www.le.ac.uk/museumstudies/bookshop/rcmg_publications.htm (acces‐sed 21 July 2004).

27. See, for instance, the AHRC’s Pilot Research Grants Dissemination scheme (http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/holders/research/research_grants/pilot_research_grants_dissemination_ scheme.asp (accessed 1 June 2005).

28. Communication with Dr Maurice Davies, Museums Association, 21 July 2004.

29. For details of AHRC’s attempts to investigate this, see: http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/news/news_pr/2004/funding_for_impact_assessment.asp (accessed 1 June 2005).