This edition of Cultural Trends contains seven policy perspectives, covering a wide range of topics pertinent to current cultural policy debates.
A note on policy perspectives
It was evident that the types of responses that contributors to Cultural Trend’s former policy review section were keen to offer tended not to adhere to the form of conventional reviews (in the sense of a formal, or critical appraisal of say, a specific book). They typically included an informed critique of a new policy; used a policy document, speech, or intervention as a jumping off point to make a wider point, or to compare policies in different countries, or over different periods of time. As such, we thought that it might, perhaps, be more accurate to reflect the fact that writers were responding to policy initiatives, rather than reviewing them.
It seemed to us that it was misleading to label those contributions, “reviews”. Policy documents and pronouncements are discussed and debated in social media, trade journals, etc. almost as soon as they appear. We wanted to offer something more, and to encourage contributions that are compelling, thought provoking and informed.
Consequently, we have adapted the policy reviews section to one that we hope will inspire writers to offer policy perspectives and provocations. These will continue to be short pieces (c. 2000 words), but liberated from the usual expectations of book reviews. This issue contains the first policy perspective section. We hope that that it will stimulate fresh debate and in-depth discussions about cultural trends.
Policy perspective in this issue
First off, Christiaan De Beukelaer offers his thoughts about the new strategy from Arts Council Malta. Malta’s cultural sector will receive significant attention as they prepare to be European Capital of Culture in 2018, and De Beukelaer finds the strategy to be indicative of the importance that the Maltese government is placing on this opportunity to position Malta as a vibrant and diverse centre of creativity.
Moving from one arts council to another, our second contributor offers a reflection on Cultural Trends’ recent conference, which marked the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the Arts Council in Great Britain. In picking out key themes from the day, James Doeser reminds us that measuring excellence and impact has been a perennial preoccupation for the Arts Council, yet arguably remains as intractable a “problem” as it has ever been.
Like excellence and impact, “cultural value” is yet one more abstract idea that many policymakers are keen to measure and as such, understanding cultural value was the aim of the extensive project funded by the AHRC between 2012 and 2016. Our next two contributions offer North American perspectives on the findings of this project, and both Farrell and Stern & Seifert find much to commend in this extensive report summarising the findings of a vast array of individual projects. However, both reviews highlight that the report falls short in a numbers of ways, meaning that although the discussion of this topic is extensive there remains questions about the extent to which the results of this project have the potential to advance the field in anything other than an incremental manner.
For anyone in the UK, the summer of 2016 has to a great extent been the summer of Brexit. While at the time of publication little clarity has been offered as to what form the UK’s exit from the European Union will take, this has not stopped debate taking place across all forms of media about the possible future of every area of public policy. Cultural policy is no exception and Stuart MacDonald offers some thoughts about what the impact of Brexit might be on the UK’s reputation, influence and soft power. Our penultimate contribution comes from Michael Rushton who discusses the recent Waterson Review on Secondary Ticketing. Arguing that it is a superb contribution to this debate, he urges all those with an interest in the live performing arts to take the time to read it.
Finally, Mark Taylor discusses the recent review of the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s Taking Part survey. Focusing on the resultant changes to the survey, Taylor finds them to be predominantly promising. However, in welcoming the wealth of data that Taking Part provides, he stresses that there is a lack of knowledge within the sector about how to make use of this data, and that universities who are teaching the arts managers and cultural policymakers of tomorrow might consider whether providing such skills and knowledge should be an integral part of their degree programmes.