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South Africa is rapidly obliterating its cultural resources and indigenous values. Particularly, this is the case in rural South Africa where manifestations of socio-economic declensions are evident. However, a number of the policies that are meant to enhance rural development lack a cohesive strategy that is based on culture-based theoretical frameworks. The paper argues that the conspicuous disregard to address rural development and its concomitant socio-economic challenges in the Revised White Paper on Arts, Culture, and Heritage, 2017, by the Department of Arts and Culture (DAC), now (DSAC); poses a great threat to sustainable rural development [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the interactions and cooperation between public-sector, business-sector, and civil-society stakeholders in developing British film policy for educational and cultural purposes. In particular, this paper adopts the Advocacy Coalition Framework to explain why and how public authorities, film industry organizations, and educationalists efficiently communicated and cooperated with each other in making the British Film Institute. By doing that, this paper explains (1) how commercial business and social workers, who were initially hostile, could build constructive partnerships; (2) how inactive, noninterventionist governments could be involved in the policymaking for cultural sectors; and (3) how private business could be persuaded into supporting cultural and educational policy for noncommercial purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the need for local cultural policies targeting cinema exhibition. Portugal evidences extreme dependency upon the central government, including for local movie screening, thus expressing the Portuguese high territorial asymmetry. Our research discusses the importance of noncommercial exhibition for countering this situation, as it is implemented by local agents (not only film societies) with a wider cultural intervention. When reflecting on the European countries policies for cinema and acknowledging the big socioeconomic and historical differences between Portugal and the Nordic countries, the regional-local initiatives of the latter emerged as an important issue for decentralization, especially the Norwegian scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues related to the definition of national identity are increasing across the world, even though they are not new. Since their own rise in the mid-1950s, minority nation governments, for political reasons and "identity and cultural survival," have been dealing with the conundrum of promoting their national identity while including newcomers. Our paper highlights the approaches of one illustrative minority nation government – Québec – in managing national identity and its cultural development. Building on Saint-Pierre's (2004) framework of cultural policy and Bergeron's (1982) theory of the state, we divide our analysis into distinct time periods and show that the political and socio-economic context affects the development of culture and language policies, as well as the identity and nationalism of Québec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity is a core value of cultural policy, and new global digital conditions for creative industries mean new challenges for diversity at a national level. Internet has become a new infrastructure for services and platforms, and global actors as Google and Amazon are changing the play. This article concerns digitization of books, the collection of the National Library of Norway and cultural policy. The results indicate the National Library's digital collection contributes to diversity in terms of demography, content, dissemination and techno-cultural aspects. For policy makers, libraries and researchers the study demonstrates a national digital service's contribution to expanded diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces research papers dealing with questions of cultural policy. The five articles offering an international perspective based on the cultural policies in seven countries; The common theme of the governments' desire to democratize culture; Overview of topics, which include the influence of a country's political system in how the government intervenes in the field of culture; The role of government in supporting the arts; Mutual lack of understanding between artists and industrialists.

The emergence of the creative industries as a policy concept has been recent and rapid. Despite divergent cultures, politics, languages, and histories, a wide variety of countries have adopted the strategy of recognizing, celebrating, and (sometimes) supporting the development of those industries considered to garner their value from the creativity of those that work in them. Rather than interpreting this emergence as a result of the creative industries being at the frontline of the rising global knowledge economy, or as the latest manifestation of a long history of cultural commodification attractive to neoliberalized governance regimes, this paper argues that the creative industries have globalized through complex processes of engagement in political and technical spheres as various policy actors and networks have sought to enroll the concept in their own political projects. This is explored by considering how the creative industries concept has been technically rendered as a global form capable of travelling to quite different places, while still maintaining a degree of coherence. Three examples are given: (1) the engagement of the policy concept by policy actors in the UK located at the local and regional level, (2) the transfer of the policy concept to New Zealand where it was deployed first as a cultural policy solution and then as an economic policy solution, and (3) the emergence of a transnational policy community of creative industries policy experts networked across globally distributed sites of knowledge production and exchange. It is concluded that globally there is much diversity in the development of creative industries policy programs, but, somewhat counterintuitively, it is the common reference point of the original formulation that has allowed this diversity to flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural policy in USA has usually been considered an exception at the international level, not only because it constitutes a unique model due to its liberal orientation and its lack of central coordination, but also because it stands out for the limitations it places on federal action. The explanation for this has traditionally focused on external factors such as the rejection of totalitarianism or the strength of the private cultural market. However, this emphasis on factors external to the cultural system is exaggerated and above all, underestimates internal factors of a religious nature. For this reason, we propose that one of the explanatory factors for this singularity is Protestantism in its most fundamentalist variants, which promotes an anti-intellectual and puritanical political culture. Consequently, a part of the population and especially the political elite linked to the Christian right has limited the consolidation and empowerment of cultural policy since the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a widespread belief that the higher the level of subsidies, the better the performance of film industries (both in quantity and quality). This article focuses on film quality—evaluated by audiences and critics—and scrutinizes this assumption through four selected countries—France, Korea, UK, and US. The main findings of this article are summarized through two points. First, despite the Korean film industry receiving the lowest level of public support, its film quality is higher than that of other selected countries. Second, the impact of subsidies on film quality turns out to be positive for the French, UK, and US films while it is negative or nil for Korean films. Although these results reflect partly differences in the background of each film industry and its public support in the four countries, they suggest that the effectiveness of subsidies and enhancement of film quality can be best achieved by better designing the subsidy schemes—not by increasing their amount. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns digitization of film distribution and exhibition in the entire cinema sector in Norway, its comprehensive consequences for diversity - seen from the perspective of cultural policy. The results of analyzing complete cinema statistics for three years (2008, 2013 and 2017) indicate that the digitization process "from film reels to film files" contributes to strengthened diversity in terms of repertoire, distribution and new audiences. For policy makers, cinema operators and researchers, the study presents positive intended and unintended consequences of digitizing the cinema sector. These positive consequences offer cinema operators new opportunities when it comes to repertoire diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arts Council is at a crossroad today. In both Britain and South Korea, its role has been reduced from the self-organized "policymaker" to "policy taker," and it now adopts a broad, relativist understanding of culture. Yet, Arts Council England and Arts Council Korea are envisaging their future differently. The former works within the explicated cultural policy framework and embraces its new roles as a national developmental agency, keenly exploring the broadened understanding of culture. The latter is desperately seeking its future in reinforcing self-organization of arts policy and minimizing the influences by non-artistic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues the importance of the relationship of the informal economy to the formal economy in the arts sector. Data on arts workers is presented from two countries in the Asia Pacific region. The article highlights that artists work across both the formal and informal economy during different phases of their career, and even when artists work in less formal settings culture is sustained, grows, and is passed on to others. The conclusion suggests why and how more equitable linkages between the informal and the formal economy should be promoted and acknowledged through an appropriately inclusive policy and regulatory environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including cultural policy, an economy of arts sector and cultural unions.

Discourse about the impact of art has been prominent in academic and arts industry discourse over the past two decades. Contention in the discourse has led to the call for new research frameworks that place the experience of the individual as central to understanding the impact of art. The authors present the background of this discourse and outline narrative inquiry as a research method that elicits individual experiences. The authors present the findings of a narrative inquiry and establish that the way individuals experience art and its impact is far broader in scope than previous research suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Patricia Goff and Barbara Jenkins which analyzes the development in Canadian cultural policy and another by Diane Grams on the production of the public art of Bronzeville in Chicago, Illinois in the 1990s.

In Québec (Canada), a growing number of cultural workers and artists are adopting the term "cultural mediation." The notion has gradually imposed itself on decision makers at the municipal scale and has become one of the preferred intervention approaches by local cultural civil servants. The lack of definition of cultural mediation makes it an ambiguous concept. This uncertainty about its boundaries or its meaning, makes its key promoters, the municipal cultural workers, essential to its existence. Drawing on interviews with cultural workers and artists, this article looks at the role that cultural workers play to make the notion circulate, to instigate new projects and to affect others. In other words, despite their relative invisibility, these administrative workers participate in cultural mediation projects on an unsuspected scale and challenge the "arm's length" principle generally used in Québec's cultural domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embedded artists in government incorporate connect art methods and esthetic perspectives in non-arts contexts, working in collaboration with government staff whether through their own professional choice or through a formal program established by a government agency or arts organization. This article contextualizes embedded artists in government in connection to artist residencies in the art world, arts in non-arts contexts, and creative placemaking to understand how work is framed and to demonstrate potential impacts while making suggestions for future research. Benefits include cross-sector collaboration and idea generation, with the potential for agency culture shift and systems change in how civic work supports residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate on the industrialization of the arts arose from a need for rationalization strategies in the creative arts field. This article examines South Korea's industrialization of the arts initiatives and related discourse during 2004–2018. Highlighting the polarized policy development of the creative arts and cultural industries as an obstacle to the growth of arts fields, the study proposes reorienting the cultural policy from simple distributive arts policy and beyond industrial policy that considers arts a subset. An arts industries' approach is suggested as a more inclusive policy stance that accommodates nonprofit arts fields, entrepreneurial arts businesses, and related industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From his in-depth study on cultural industries in Ghana and Burkina Faso, Christiaan De Beukelaer (2012) observed that the surge in digital piracy, normally regarded as a violation of intellectual property rights, had actually created new possibilities for increased distribution and consumption networks for the African music industry. Joe Karaganis (2011) further argues that digital piracy should not be regarded as a 'crime' but 'a global pricing problem'. The high prices that are charged for media products such as music, film and video games do not match the low incomes of most consumers in less developed countries. This article argues for a revisiting of intellectual property rights (IPR) in contemporary African contexts, with particular focus on the question of 'digital piracy'. If the shift toward cultural democracy is meant to promote cultural capabilities for everyone to create and express their own possibilities, then new approaches to intellectual property rights are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous studies have examined cultural democracy in connection with cultural policies enacted by policymakers, they have overlooked the role of public participation and mobilization. This study explores how cultural democracy is achieved by collective mobilization. Our case study of Guggenheim Helsinki shows that rising cultural globalization triggered a social movement to resist diminishing representation of national identity. A bottom-up process of collective mobilization created pressures on policymakers to direct cultural policies toward maintaining the dominance of local culture. In particular, cultural democracy was delivered through public participation in the control of culture while rejecting cultural globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European cultural policies experienced a decentralization process in the late twentieth century, in which regional and local governments took center stage rather than central governments. Thus, Spain represents a prominent and unique case in this trend, in which a state that inherited absolutism and centralist and authoritarian government, also adopted a decentralized model in cultural policy very quickly on its return to democracy. However, it did not take on a federal form of shared government but rather a decentralized government where the regions undertook active cultural actions. Nevertheless, as of the year 2000 and especially after the great recession of 2008, the Ministry of Culture, traditionally located in the capital, resumed the centralist path under a national construction program of a large hegemonic capital, namely Madrid. The undertaking of a research project and the analysis of secondary data lead us to the conclusion that the central government has progressively shelved cultural decentralization, adopting a hierarchical and unifying conception of cultural policy, that is, a cultural recentralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including Yugoslav culture from 1970 to 1990, cultural policy debates in America, and stolen art restitution claims.

This article uses the case of Concerts Norway to analyze how the agency of esthetics is changing and expanding within a cultural policy institution. Concerts Norway has provided concerts to all age groups and all parts of the country for nearly fifty years. The ambition of the institution has been to ensure that all Norwegian citizens have had access to quality music. The article describes how these cultural policy ambitions entail a general esthetic agency, and how different kinds of musical genres have been given agency through the work of the institution, thereby representing a seemingly omnipotent and increasingly omnivorous cultural policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the current focus within urban cultural policy on using art as a tool in urban development. Based on theories of participation, democracy, and public art, the article sets out to investigate critically the concept of placemaking. The discussion is based on an analysis of the public art project Placemaking, which took place during 2015 in eight municipalities around Copenhagen in Denmark. I argue that, when used as a tool in urban development, participatory public art engenders contradictory encounters. These encounters challenge the cultural political effort to democratize art and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nation's cultural policy is derived from its political and governance history, and its past practices. Taking the genealogical traits of South Korean cultural policies into account, the authors examine the contributions and risks of a public-led arts incubator program. One of the Arts Council Korea's grant programs in the arts-incubating structure was involved with a public funding scandal of political intervention during the grant review process. Consequently, questions were raised about the current bureaucratic system for cultural policy. This article discusses the legitimacy of state intervention in the arts, and analyzes the case with relevant collected documents and interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay evaluates the character of the unique French culture of the Acadiana region of Southwest Louisiana. This Cajun space represents twenty-two of the state's sixty-four parishes (counties) of Louisiana—about one-third of the state. What follows is a discussion of the persistence of a distinct way of life in the face of powerful forces of cultural homogenization. This entails (1) what it means to be Cajun; (2) the nature of the Acadiana homeland; (3) the survival and maintenance of distinguishing forms of cultural distinctiveness. A coda reflects on the contentious issue of cultural authenticity as imagined and reimagined. As a distinctive cultural space, Acadiana is a rarity in the dominant American ethos. It is an interesting case study of the survival of communal culture that has similarities with other spaces, such as Cornwall, Brittany, and Bavaria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the notions of subjective well-being—which has been underscored as an aim for public policy—and optimism, studied by Oliver Bennett as an implicit cultural policy. It will give an overview of the high level of subjective well-being in Mexico according to several recent surveys and consider the relation that culture and arts have with subjective well-being in different countries. This will help to frame the proposal that happiness and life satisfaction could be promoted in Mexico through arts management and cultural policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sphere of arts and culture has been going through a process of economic reevaluation during the last few decades. Parallel to the rise of a creative economy discourse, which both in its political and scientific forms has highlighted the economic significance of culture and arts, entrepreneurship has become a feature in the cultural policy of many countries. In this article, we compare how entrepreneurship is established and used as a concept in cultural policy discourses in two Nordic countries, Norway and Finland. Through analyzing policy plans and documents, we discuss what is seen as positive cultural or artistic activity in the framework of entrepreneurship, and we identify the eligible cultural subjects of this discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite widespread use in the cultural field, best practices remain theoretically and empirically under-researched. The aim of this article is to achieve better understanding of their use and effectiveness in policy learning and transfer, using a case study of a cross-national policy coordination process in the European Union, the Open Method of Coordination. Using empirical data from interview and participant observation material, the article highlights several fundamental challenges of best practices, such as issues of contextualization, representativeness, and critical analysis. It finishes by offering six critical reflection questions on the use of best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article situates the emergence of the “creative placemaking” policy initiative as the coordinated continuation of longstanding artistic practices and a reaction to scant funding in the United States. In contrast to creative class policies, creative placemaking proposes a broader set of outcomes, attempts to directly address issues of inequality, and expands the role of artists in society. However, these characteristics entail several challenges for stakeholders: difficulties in devising recognized outcome metrics due to the wide variety of projects; inadvertent reproduction of inequities; and limited opportunities for scaling due to inter-occupational competition. The article concludes with implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study aims to explore the policy discourse of the creative economy and its implementations in the developmental state's creative economy policies, with a case study of the Korean government. By analyzing these policies and comparing them with the British government's policy initiatives of the creative economy, this article finds that the Korean government interprets creative economy as a way of strengthening its leverages on economic sectors and rehabilitating the nation's long-lasting political-economic coalition between the government and several conglomerates, while the notion of “creativity” and creative workers become a sub-discourse of this interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The current digital era poses numerous challenges for cultural policy, which must adapt not only to new technologies, but also to new forms of consumption that have arisen alongside them. These challenges are all the more significant due to the increasing complexity that characterizes the field of cultural policy, which is intertwined in many ways with the media. In Canada, the situation is complicated by the fact that federal and provincial governments promote distinct goals for the development of a digital cultural policy. Because of its cultural particularity, the province of Québec presents an interesting case study, especially with respect to its proposed Plan Cultural Numérique du Québec (PCNQ) as it differs from the federal plan. Through a comparison of the federal and provincial orientations towards the future of digital culture, this article exposes and analyzes the inherent tensions that emerge as these different approaches are elaborated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The écomusée--the small, local, and community-owned and managed museum--and similar cultural institutions, represent more than a typical museum: they are also community movements in time and space that resist the modern hierarchical practices of the cultural sector. Through four Canadian cases, this article examines the different forms of écomusée resistance by discursively excavating the conditions of their formation, institutional practices, and the resulting effects and implications. The movement's resulting schism in space and time has created local empowerment of underrepresented community groups by reappropriating and challenging the modern cultural landscape with implications for public action and public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores an organization's practices, values, and its role in society within a transformed legal status. The article clarifies the role of the organizational form in engagement with society and outlines the connections between different types of legitimacy by elaborating concepts of neo-institutional theory and cultural policy. A conceptual map of the institutional elements, cultural values, and legitimacy is presented. The analysis is based on the Estonian Russian Theater and concludes that an organization can influence the basis of its legitimacy. The management's aspirations to balance values and deal with cognitive legitimacy may lead to rearranging the institutional framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Europeanization challenged the post-Communist countries with a series of difficulties and opportunities regarding the process of cultural policymaking. The exchange of information took place simultaneously with the process of national policymaking, influencing it. The article tackles this two-fold process and its implications in an endeavor to embrace sociocultural diversity on the one hand, and the attempt to harmonize national systems on the other hand. Culture is deeply linked to the perception of national identity, tradition, representation, and policy. Romanian culture and cultural policies have progressed through different stages in the last few decades: from Communist censorship and the disturbing period after the Revolution, to European pre-accession and post-accession, when cultural policies aimed to comply with the European directives for culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article asks whether capacity building and valuing the arts at ground level is a sign of connectedness to or remoteness from national cultural policy—theoretically, geographically, and politically—between government-directed cultural policy and community cultural activity. Two case studies, one involving multimedia in remote communities in the Barkly region of Australia's Northern Territory, and one involving an international sculptural trail in South Australia's Adelaide Hills, are examined to see who is making a difference, and does it matter? It is argued that cultural sustainability is acquired through community capacity-building and value-adding arts activity, a role particularly suited to local government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to encourage the reunion of economics and sociology in respect of culture's value underway in the work of David Stark and Michael Hutter. It proposes cultural reporting as an important domain it might address. Using Weberian ideal-type analysis, it examines the distinctive mode of contemporary cultural provision. I argue there are features of modern bureaucratic systems which account for the significant failures seen today. I introduce the Integrated Reporting Framework and explain its basic principles. has the capacity to streamline cultural reporting and equip it with appropriate narrative accounts, mitigating the reductive aspects of bureaucratic evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In many cities, cultural and creative clusters are elements of an ongoing urban development. As networks of arts institutions of different genres, structures, hierarchies, temporal and spatial forms, and size, they are rich examples for strategic analysis. We use the MuseumsQuartier (MQ) Wien as an example of a cultural cluster within a historic city center and focus on (1) the organizational, institutional, and sociopolitical impact of more or less detailed strategic frames of the overarching organizational construction; and (2) understanding strategy-making processes in cultural clusters with reference to the overall political frame and the strategy-as-practice approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Introduces a series of articles which deals with government policy towards art, musicians and the education system in the U.S.

This article examines the feasibility and sustainability of digital technology to promote cultural heritage sites in the City of Tshwane (CoT), South Africa. Post-Apartheid development imperatives compel the CoT to construct new cultural sites. Over time, the number of visitors to the places declined. The CoT introduced digital technology to collect and repackage information on some of the cultural edifices to add value to them. However, the absence of heritage/digital technology impact analysis and cultural policy in the CoT could compromise the program. The article recommends further introduction of important facilities and services in the sites to increase public interest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New discourses have emerged in regard to the development of the cultural sector. In many cases, experiences from the Global South are not part of the international discussion. Despite representing 16% of the population in the United States, Latin-American cultural roots present great contrasts and conflicts with the U.S. legal, policy, and trade frameworks. The objective of this research is to explore the case of Puerto Rico as a region in which cultural differences affect the design and implementation of cultural policy. Overall, the analysis focuses on the implications for arts management, including differences in managers’ profiles and the challenges organizations face in an environment of political, social, and cultural shock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, the socialist government of Greece (PASOK) joined for the first time the portfolios of culture and tourism, establishing the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The discourse supporting and contesting the merger, as well as the merger's implications, are explored from a cultural policy perspective, through an analysis of the statements and policies issued by the government on the issue during its first year in office. The challenges created by the merger concern policymakers internationally, as they echo increasing tensions between socio-cultural and financial objectives as a result of worldwide convergence of cultural and economic spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In current policy debates, cities are often seen as “experience machines” in which the quantity and variety of experience possibilities are vital. The Finnish capital, Helsinki, has chosen arts festivals and other events as tools to achieve this aim. This article focuses on the way in which Helsinki's festival policy has developed and analyzes the response of metropolitan residents to the proliferation of arts festivals. The article highlights the importance of artistic quality as something both cultural policy-makers and arts audiences are looking for. Artistic excellence can thus be seen as a major contributor to the success of festivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the most essential issues in the trade and culture discourse from a global law perspective. It looks into the intensified disconnect between trade and culture and exposes its flaws and the considerable drawbacks that it brings with it. It is argued that these drawbacks become especially pronounced in the digital media environment, which has strongly affected both the conditions of trade with cultural products and services and cultural diversity in local and global contexts. In this modified setting, there could have been a number of feasible 'trade and culture' solutions-i.e., regulatory designs that while enhancing trade liberalization are also conducive to cultural policy. Yet, the realization of any of these options becomes chimerical as the line between trade and culture matters is drawn in a clear and resolute manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketing in the arts sector has evolved during the past decades from a functional tool to a business philosophy. At the same time, a relational view of art as experience has emerged in contemporary arts philosophy, highlighting the role of arts consumers in the creation and reception of arts. As a consequence, arts consumers have gained a central position within the artistic mission of arts organizations, posing new challenges to the role of arts marketing both as a practice and as an academic discipline. Against this background, financial figures and audience numbers are insufficient indicators of the contribution that arts marketing makes to the functioning of arts organizations. This article suggests evaluating the performance of arts marketing based on the contribution made to the achievement of the arts organization's artistic mission and proposes a model based on Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard to guide the artistic-mission-led evaluation of arts marketing performance. By paying attention to the new strategic role of arts marketing within the emerging relational view of the arts and by integrating recent literature on performance management in nonprofit organizations, we make a theoretical contribution to the body of knowledge on arts marketing performance evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is increasingly the case that cultural policy at all levels of governance is expected to address a suite of concerns much broader than those traditionally associated with the arts and creative practice. Indeed, in many nations, including most notably Britain, the concerns of cultural policy now embrace the economic and the social, as well as the cultural. In Britain, this convergence is occurring as part of a broader policy concern to ameliorate social exclusion by providing people with opportunities to participate in the creative economy. Drawing on the findings of a major study of the factors shaping cultural policy internationally, this article identifies and maps the priorities, key intersections, and convergences associated with these priorities in British cultural policy. The article argues that, in spite of taking different forms and having varying emphases depending on the constituency and the level of governance involved, the convergence agenda currently dominating British cultural policy is nevertheless remarkably consistent in terms of the discourses surrounding culture, the remit of the cultural sphere, and strategic policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do 'classical' big art institutions (museums, the ballet, the opera, symphony orchestras) react to phenomena of globalization such as migration flows, the 'denationalization' of artistic movements, the enormous growth of the number of artists, the trend of a global cultural branding of cities, etc.? And which cultural policies do governments develop to interfere in the relationship between those art institutions and their changing environments? Those were the central questions I asked while doing research about the position of art institutions in society today. The research concentrated on a very diverse sample of big art institutions in Europe. The research begins with the insights of Actor Network Theory and the political philosophy of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt and leads to an ideal typical two-dimensional model to classify the possible strategies that such institutions and their responsible governments can use on the local, national and international level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small arts organizations (SAO) have not been studied in the field of cultural policy and arts administration despite their purported importance. Through a review of the literature and extensive personal communications with professionals in the arts world, various meanings and manifestations of “smallness” across the creative sector are explored, highlighting the significant role of SAOs and their dynamic ecology. Multiple indicators of “smallness” are identified, whose possible combinations can enhance our ability to recognize both the uniqueness and sub-categories of organizations that currently are grouped into a single category of “small” arts organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a qualitative case study on the dedicated funding source for arts and culture in Denver, Colorado. The research shows how the voter-approved sales tax known as the Science & Cultural Facilities District not only sustained the arts in the region but also played a significant role in urban renewal and development. The analysis concludes that cultural policy can play a proactive role in urban sustainable development. Such a concentrated case study on city cultural policy may be useful to politicians, arts leaders, advocates, cultural and urban policy researchers and academics, and others involved in cultural policy and urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces and contextualizes the essays contained in this edition of the journal. It offers an analysis of the political, economic, and social context of New Zealand prior to Helen Clark's election as Prime Minister in 1999. It then provides some account of her initial actions as Minister of Arts, Culture, and Heritage, focusing on the “cultural recovery package” that featured prominently on her initial policy agenda. While this package established her reputation as an enterprising Cultural Minister, it is suggested that the true legacy of her decade in the portfolio may lie elsewhere. Among the particular achievements to be considered are her promotion and preservation of New Zealand's military heritage; her successful adaptation for New Zealand of Britain's Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS); “creative industries” policy framework; her extension of IP protection with the onset of the digital age; and her increased investment in the New Zealand film industry as it sought to strike some balance between achieving global market success and articulating a distinctive cultural vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]