Arts practitioners in the cultural policy process: spear-carriers or speaking parts?

Abstract

This paper considers the argument that arts practitioners are rarely acknowledged by cultural policy researchers as being more than marginally involved in policy-making. Drawing on public policy analysis which pays attention to a breadth of policy actors, and on the concept of civil society, the paper examines whether these approaches can help to better investigate and understand the role of arts practitioners in the policy process. It discusses this subject in relation to cultural policy in general and in the specific arena of British arts policy, focusing on original case-study research of playwrights’ organisations and playwriting policy. The case-study evidence demonstrates that arts practitioners – through involvement in policy debate and implementation, and their own initiatives and activities – are frequently engaged in the policy process and thus more broadly in the democratic public domain. Understanding of cultural policy development is therefore considerably weakened if the role of practitioners is ignored.

Keywords:

• arts practitioners
• cultural policy
• policy process
• civil society
• playwrights’ organisations

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the support of a British Academy Overseas Conference Grant enabling the presentation of an earlier version of this paper. I would also like to thank Per Mangset for his very helpful commentary on that paper, and the anonymous reviewers for their useful remarks on the revised version.

Notes

1. Written materials include primary documents in the North-West Playwrights archive (John Rylands Library, University of Manchester), the personal archive of playwright David Edgar on the Theatre Writers’ Union, and documentation provided by interviewees and others involved in the field. Thirty-three people were interviewed comprehensively, and another eight gave short interviews or answered specific queries. The interviewees were playwrights and people working for playwrights’ organisations; artistic directors and literary managers of theatre companies; local authority arts officers; Arts Council and Regional Arts Board officers. Cf. Woddis (2005, Introduction & Appendix 1).

2. TWU, covering England and Wales, was established in 1975 and grew to 500 members by the 1990s. In 1997, it merged with the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (itself formed in 1958 and representing writers in a variety of media).

3. Unlike most of the writers’ organisations, NPT was not set-up as a self-help group, but as a service for playwrights with paid staff. Its members also included theatre companies, literary agents, directors, and television and radio companies.

4. Monsterism – a manifesto. http://www.monsterists.com/pages/manifesto.html, accessed 12 July 2005.

5. Theatre Writers Union, Newsletter, Winter 1991/2, p. 6.

6. Author’s interview with writer Graeme Rigby, March 1999.

7. Theatre Writers’ Group press release, 1st January 1976. (In the personal archive of David Edgar, hereafter referred to as [DE].)

8. TWU, Underpayment of playwrights: devolution and the TMA theatres, December 1983. [DE].

9. Jonathan Meth, Playing fast and loose, ArtsNews (Magazine of the National Campaign for the Arts), Issue 64, Summer 2003, p. 14.

10. Cf, for example, Independent Theatre Council, ITC policy matters, Issue 4, pp. 1–2, July 2000.

11. This point is also made briefly in McGuigan, 2004, pp. 51 and 132.

12. Unsolicited scripts – un-attributed insert in TWU Executive Committee Minutes, 5th March 1994 [DE].