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This paper provides a systematic and critical review of the literature on cultural and creative ecology and ecosystems. There has been a growing use of ecological language in relation to the cultural and creative sectors within both research and policymaking. However, there is little consistency in the terms employed, with considerable slippage in meanings and application. The paper, therefore, undertakes a two-stage review of the literature. First, a systematic review analysing the content of 56 publications identified within Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar. Secondly, a critical review examining definitional and terminological inconsistencies, the boundaries and geographical scales of cultural and creative ecosystems, and the range of methods and data employed. Here we clarify the relationship between ecological approaches and previous framings such as "creative industry" and "creative economy". The paper concludes by proposing an agenda for future research, seeking to consolidate the research field and support ecological policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent does the sense of touch matter in cultural consumption? After an extended period of limited social gathering due to COVID-19, it is vital to assess the importance of physical contacts in cultural events. Focused on the live music industry, our paper addresses the following question: How important is the perception and experience of tactile value amongst festival- and concertgoers? For this purpose, we conducted a survey between September and November 2021 and collected 142 exploitable questionnaires. Our goal was to detect structural relationships between latent variables related to touch through a Structural Equation Model. The latter reveals the relative pleasantness of tactile value experienced by our respondents, with effects on their live music experience. In view of the importance of tactile value in live music events, we formulate several recommendations to practitioners and cultural policy in order to further take into account this variable in decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who cares for cultural and creative workers (CCWs)? This paper considers the impact of a declined welfare support system across European states on CCWs and investigates the role played by creative intermediaries in providing care for those employed within the sector. Building on both quantitative and qualitative data taken from a range of European creative intermediary organisations, the paper applies Joan Tronto’s politicised framework of care to articulate how work undertaken by intermediaries can be understood as a form of care work. The findings highlight the range of creative intermediaries working to support CCWs across Europe and illustrates their role in conducting research on the sector in response to the lack of available robust data at a more official governance level. It explores how these organisations are filling both a welfare and knowledge gap however, that this support is ad hoc, supported by various funding models which place the intermediary organisations themselves in a precarious position. In response to this, the paper calls for investment in collaborations between higher education, policy makers and creative intermediaries to strengthen support for CCWs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how arts practitioners reflect on their work amidst deepening economic inequality. Given the renewed interest in the social role of arts institutions under conditions of financialised neo-liberalism, the paper traces the complex ways in which economic imperatives figure in cultural practice. Drawing on interviews with UK-based gallery directors, museum curators, art consultants, and artists, I map out how austerity politics and intensifying privatisation processes have a profound impact on the workings of the sector, how they recalibrate dynamics between private and public artworlds, and how they shape processes of production and curation. My data specifically document how increasing economic precarity brings into relief structural inequalities of gender, race and (post)-colonial legacies already manifesting in the artworld. Rather than understanding austerity as a financial condition only, the paper thus presents an empirical exploration of the wider inequalities that it has exacerbated, from arts funding to institutions' programming practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three main factors spurred a re-think of Spain's cultural policy: (1) cuts in public spending on culture: (2) the 2008 global financial crisis and its impact on cultural funding; (3) the institutional crisis and the popular unrest that found expression in the 15-M. These factors created an opportunity for rethinking cultural policy. This paper examines two contemporary proposals for newly orienting cultural policy. One is based on the idea of cultural "commons" free of the State and market forces. The other has been drawn up by the Podemos political party, and seeks to break the cultural mould cast by successive post-dictatorship social-democratic and conservative governments and is based upon cultural dissemination. This paper thus: (1) analyses the discourse on cultural policy in Spain by left-wing populism; (2) assesses to what extent this political current came up with an alternative to earlier policy paradigms; (3) discusses the soundness of commons-based proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the interface between the state, the cultural industries and the financial market by focusing on a policy experiment from South Korea: using venture capital for public cultural investment. This policy experiment has significantly increased capital injection to the cultural industries and has provided a fertile ground for the industries to quickly grow. Challenging the dichotomist understanding of the state-market relations, this paper views the government's use of venture capital as a "state-led regulated financialisation" project, in which the cultural ministry has created, expanded and "tamed" the cultural venture capital market. Venture capital companies' profit maximisation is seriously limited by not only government regulations but also strategic behaviour of private investors (cultural distributors). Yet, the paper points out that involving the financial market further complicates cultural industry policy, which already entails tension between culture and industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research investigates the response of public libraries to the COVID crisis in the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy). Group interviews were conducted involving 36 librarians from the 9 provinces of the Region, using the ethnographic methodology of “deep hanging out”. Results show the resilience of public libraries during the crisis; the importance of libraries as social infrastructure beyond the services they provide, highlighting how the digital divide has affected the demand for the libraries’ services; the need to implement librarian communication and digitization skills, as well as a lack of consistent support from the Region were noted. The first section of the paper provides framework over cultural institutions and the COVID crisis. The second introduces the methodology for the sample choice and for conducting the interviews. The third section presents findings from the interviews. The fourth section presents conclusive remarks and policy indications for the support of public libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decolonising the curriculum is a global imperative that takes different forms and urgency depending on the context. Developments across the globe such as BlackLivesMatter and student responses to the pandemic and online learning have raised new questions about the curriculum – critically questioning higher education institutions' plans about not only providing access to resources but about the (cultural) authority of curricula, pedagogical and research practices that are still dominated by Western discourses. This paper examines three experiences of curriculum decolonisation in cultural policy and management, an applied subject that has culture as its object, in three different contexts, Serbia, Puerto Rico and South Africa: namely how the pursuit of a pluriversal knowledge ecology found expression in the curriculum, content and pedagogical practices deployed to deliver locally relevant education; and how educators resolved the ontological and epistemic discontinuities between the standard disciplinary canon and local realities to embed and contextualise the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport committee's inquiry into the economics of music streaming. The scrutiny of the committee's oral and written evidence, and final report is placed within the context of the music industry's significance to UK cultural policy since the late 1990s. The perspectives of the UK's musicians and song-writers are a focal point of the analysis of the inquiry's published documentation, as they are when discussing the committee's recommendations released in July 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the forces of globalisation brought B-boying (or breakdancing) to Korea, the traditionally conservative mainstream society looked askance at the practice. The government, concerned with building a strong national culture, set restrictive policies to protect Korean society from what it saw as a disruptive foreign influence. Nevertheless, a marginalised Korean B-boy subculture developed; rejected locally, Korean crews began competing globally. When they swept major international competitions, B-boying exploded in Korea and the government began to support and deploy it as iconic of Korea's youthful and dynamic art world. Thus, B-boying in Korea has undergone two major cycles of globalisation and Korean government intervention since the 1980s. In this paper, we trace how a marginalised subculture came to be institutionalised as a point of national pride by the government and the role that glocalisation has played in this dramatic reversal of the fortunes of the B-boys in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the discourse of creative industries is interpreted in the Canadian context with a case study of the Department of Canadian Heritage's Creative Canada policy framework. Based on textual analysis of policy documents from both federal and provincial governments, it analyzes the underlying dynamics of Creative Canada with pre-existing dialogues of Canadian cultural policies. The findings of this research indicate that this policy masterplan reinterprets traditional mandates of Canadian cultural policies, such as safeguarding the nation's cultural sovereignty and developing a distinctive Canadian value with market mechanisms. While Creative Canada is a major turning point in policymaking towards the commodification of culture and creativity, its schemes of valuing culture and the arts remain subject to the complexity of the nation's cultural politics that also shapes the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In democratic societies, the political process ultimately is about making value judgements. Comparative cultural policy research indicates different value orientations may be behind cultural policies of different nations. It has also indicated developments that are common, such as democratisation of culture, neoliberalisation of politics and globalisation. As of yet, such value changes have not been studied at the level of cultural policy documents analysed as text. This article proposes a methodology to study value changes behind cultural policies over time and across nations. Based in the "pragmatic sociology" of Boltanski, Thévenot, and Chiapello, the article presents a big data methodology to uncover value changes of policy documents over time, between different policy agents, and across nations using material from the UK and the Netherlands. The paper explains the methodology, discusses the implications of the preliminary outcomes and provides suggestions for further comparative policy analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within recent years, China has experienced growth in the construction and development of museums. Encouraged by financial and cultural policy measures, China’s public museums have opened to the world with the aim of introducing Chinese culture to a broad audience and connecting with the global cultural marketplace. Cross-cultural collaboration has formed a prominent part of this strategy, functioning as a diplomatic tool to nurture mutual understanding between nations. Using empirical data from a research project that examined the production and consumption of an overseas exhibition hosted by Nanjing Museum (南京博物院: nanjing bowuyuan), this paper explores the processes of negotiation and avenues of innovation that emerged from the production of the exhibition and collaborative research project. By reflecting on the lessons learned from this partnership, practical solutions are offered to help inform future strategies and ways of working that may promote sustainable engagement and collaboration between UK and Chinese cultural institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advocates for an approach to evaluation for participatory arts that privileges creative risk-taking into their design and considers some of the leaps of knowledge and discovery that can ensue when they are embraced and encouraged by the research team. By examining the methods used to research the London-based participatory project Unleashed (Barbican Centre, 2012), it considers how a creative, durational approach to research and evaluation methods might support the leaps in knowledge that result from moments of "failure" or "decomposition" (Hughes et al. 2011), and in turn, paint a clearer and more detailed picture of the modes of disruption that sit at the heart of the practice. This paper reflects on the narrative of social inclusion set forth by recent UK governments and cultural policy agendas in which critical reflection is often challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of feminist perspectives in the cultural policies in the city of Barcelona during the period 2015–2019, attempting to identify potential resistances to gender-focused cultural policies. Based on a literature review and interviews with cultural policy and gender experts, the article reveals that resistances to gender-focused cultural policies remain in the cultural administration of the city, despite its feminist discourse. There are two key reasons for this resistance and for the lack of change to public cultural policies: the inertia in the organisation of cultural policies by the responsible department of the City Council and large cultural institutions, which are dominated by institutional cultures that protect male privilege and power; and the City Council's failure to consider the feminist movement in the design and development of cultural policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current Chinese Book Quota System derives from a traditional socialist model that integrates cultural governance, ruling party ideology and infrastructure management. Such a wartime legacy no longer suits demand from modern consumers, and yet bureaucratic management sustains the inefficient institution, which has accidentally fostered a countervailing informal market and in turn stimulates cultural policy changes. This article uses informal book number transactions and the complementary institutional effect of such informality, namely restructuring the state-owned, regulating the non-state-owned and adaptive digital regulation, to demonstrate one Chinese governance outcome of formal-informal linkages. Book quota system is doomed to be obsolete, nonetheless, its development in the visible future depends on party-state weighing domestic ideological guidance and a more vociferous stance in the international battle of cultural symbols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the move towards a supposedly "evidence-based" cultural policy, "evidence" is rarely the main driver of decision-making. If "evidence" is not the actual basis of policymaking, then what is its real role? Why is there so much "bad" or unverifiable evidence of impact in cultural policy documents? The article suggests focusing on recent developments in policy theory for more accurate and sophisticated approaches on the connection between evidence and policymaking, and the role that ideas and values have in shaping policy. A closer engagement with theories of policy formation demonstrates policymaking has a fundamentally discursive character: it is based on ideas, processes of argumentation and persuasion, so can never be an ideologically neutral exercise. The article concludes that cultural policy studies can benefit from a more systematic engagement with policy theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on both resource dependence theory and institutional theory, this study attempts to explore how, as a result of the financial crisis of 2008 and the drastic cuts to public funding for culture, corporate sponsorship has been acquiring an increasingly important role in the financial structure and internal organisation of large cultural facilities. Based on a sample of fifteen of Spain's most emblematic cultural institutions located in the cities of Madrid and Barcelona, the application of these two complementary theories offers an insight into the growth in direct donors' contributions to major state-owned cultural institutions in Spain, while also helping to explain the influence of institutional environments on organisations, with an emphasis on the central role that board composition plays in fundraising income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's cultural policy has been a key driver to the formation and development of the domestic digital game industry. In line with the nationwide promotion of "Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation" since 2015 (He et al., 2019), there has witnessed an increasing emphasis on entrepreneurship in the related cultural policies at the local level, especially in China's major cities known for high-tech creative clusters. Focusing on the thriving gaming entrepreneurship in Shanghai, this article adopts an entrepreneurial ecosystem approach to examine the under-studied relationship between the creation of gaming ventures and the relevant set of cultural policy. Drawing on 33 gaming entrepreneur interviews complemented by policy content, this article provides rich accounts of how gaming entrepreneurs react to and reflect on the local cultural policy in relation to two key elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystem: financial capital availability and support services. The findings shed new light on creative autonomy and cultural policy in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promotion of regional cultural production is seen as critically important both in ensuring a television content that reflects a diversity of voices and in strengthening regional production hubs to support sustainable creative economies across the UK (Ofcom. [19th December 2018]. Review of Regional TV Production and Programming Guidance Consultation. Accessed 8.12.20. Available from: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/%5f%5fdata/assets/pdf%5ffile/0015/130911/Review-of-Regional-TV-Production-and-Programming-Guidance.pdf). The problem of London's domination of the UK's screen industries has long been recognised. In October 2018, Channel 4 confirmed that Leeds would be home to its National HQ, while Bristol and Glasgow would be the locations of two new Creative Hubs. This decision followed a competitive bidding process which fits within a broader paradigm of local and regional development led by the cultural and creative sector and specifically links to an articulation of the value of creative hubs. Within the context of the promotion of a creative hubs paradigm, this article responds to the need for more detailed investigations of political and pragmatic investment decisions around regional screen production. It examines some of the public narratives around the bidding process for the Leeds HQ and Glasgow Hub, as well as those aspects of the relocation that were "hidden" from official accounts put forward by C4 and local, regional and national government bodies. Finally, it reflects on the future of regional screen hub development in the context of continuing devolution of broadcasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's integrated global capitalism and its neoliberal cosmovision, contemporary cultural policies have increasingly been mirroring this dominant way of global governing. Discourses and practices of economic impact measurements, precarity and austerity measures in the cultural sector, the push for profit-friendly creative industries, privatisation of public resources and increased commodification of cultural experiences have all normalised capitalist logic within dominant cultural policies. Despite increasing literature on post-capitalism and a sense that capitalism is experiencing a new wave of limitations and frontiers, cultural policy hasn't been actively dealing with post-capitalist imaginings. In this conversation with Milena Dragićević Šešić, we discuss the tenets of capitalist cultural policies today and wonder about alternatives to them – about possibilities for different, post-capitalist futures for cultural policies and ideas that are maybe on the margins today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]