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How do ideas become policies? What route do they take from inception to implementation and what criteria are used to evaluate one set of proposals against another? This paper examines the development of the Creative Work Fellowship policy proposal in Limerick, tracing the origins of the idea, itself a contended and negotiated object, from discussions between academics and policy-makers through to scoping, pitching and scaling the policy to its eventual users. This policy idea was designed during the Intelligence Unit (IU) commissioned by Limerick2020 as part of the city’s bid to become European Capital of Culture in 2020. The IU took the form of a policy think-tank, tasked with generating insights, ideas and policy proposals into the place of culture within Limerick city and region. The IU structure created a set of actors and an epistemic community capable of both generating and using ideas effectively, chiefly through two mechanisms. The first involved a robust critique and rebuilding process th...

1. Introduction: popular music and policy Shane Homan, Martin Cloonan and Jen Cattermole 2. Music, markets and manifestos John Street 3. Irrational amusements, theatre law, and moral reformers in nineteenth-century America: implications for later popular music study Gillian Margaret Rodger 4. Steering a review: some reflections on a gig Martin Cloonan 5. Independent creative subcultures and why they matter Kate Shaw 6. 'Lend me your ears': social policy and the hearing body Bruce Johnson 7. Why get involved? Finding reasons for municipal interventions in the Canadian music industry Richard Sutherland 8. From Coombs to Crean: popular music and cultural policy in Australia Shane Homan