Re-Visioning Arts and Cultural Policy: Current Impasses and Future Directions

Abstract

This monograph examines options for governments to respond to public debate about involvement in enhancing, fostering and shaping the artistic and cultural production and consumption of their jurisdictions. It explores the emerging bifurcation in national cultural policy directions. This bifurcation is characterised, on the one hand, by a regression to forms of old-style government patronage in supporting arts and cultural production, and, on the other, by the trend towards pushing arts and cultural practitioners to the marketplace with public taste becoming the raison d’être of creative practice. Policy discourses say to the sector: be excellent, be subsidised and be budget-dependent and/or be marketable, commercial and self-funding. But is this schizophrenic approach to arts and cultural policy sustainable? Are there viable alternatives? And, what are the long-term implications for policy-making in this sector?