Roses for everyone? Arts Council England’s 2020–2030 strategy and local authority museums–a thematic analysis and literature review

Abstract

In this review article I critically reflect on the ambitions set out in Arts Council England’s 10-year strategy “Let’s Create”. My reflections are informed by a comprehensive literature review as well as by my ongoing research into the impact of austerity on local authority museum services. The literature surveyed allows for an analysis both of the alignment between the strategy and broader political rhetoric and discourses of austerity and welfare state retrenchment and of the tension between the rhetoric of "Let's Create" and the realities facing local authorities and publicly funded cultural organisations. I argue that the strategy's indirect acknowledgement of the negative impact of austerity policies is obscured by gestures towards diversity, inclusion and cultural pluralism, which leaves difficult questions of how to translate the strategy's ambitions into actual action unanswered. In conclusion, "Let's Create" is found to be a stark illustration of Arts Council England's acquiescence to the politics and discourses of austerity and the marginalisation of alternative values and practices which, as the literature shows, are alive and well within museums and the cultural sector.