The Arts Council of Great Britain: Keynes’s Legacy

Abstract

This chapter offers an analytical assessment of Keynes's influence on post-war arts policy by examining the Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB) as a policy model. It argues that both Keynes's political philosophy as a Liberal and his underlying moral approach to government policy shaped his approach to arts policy. Two organizations with which Keynes was involved inspired his plans for the ACGB: the wartime Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) and the University Grants Committee (UGC). He was appointed chairman of CEMA in 1942, and as bursar of Kings College, Cambridge, knew about government funding of academic research. Two characteristics of the policy model---the notion of `distance' from government and the emphasis on professional standards---both associated with Keynesian cultural thinking, are explored in this chapter.