LOCAL ARTS AND THE CREATIVE ECONOMY

Clive GrayReader in Cultural PolicyDe Montfort University

United Kingdom

ARTS FOR ART’S SAKE, MONEY FOR GOD’S SAKE

• Using culture and the arts for economic development

• Top-down instrumentalisation: using the arts for other purposes

• Bottom-up attachment: linking the arts to areas with greater political, economic and social clout

WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?

• Instrumental policy: must be assessed in terms of the (non-arts) policy intentions

• Attachment policy: must be assessed in terms of both arts and non-arts policy intentions

• ‘Pure’ arts policy: must be assessed only in terms of arts policy intentions

POLICY OVERLAPS

• Policy has multiple intentions and results• Cannot effectively assess these as if they were

independent of each other• A requirement is for more effective policy

assessment tools

POLICY EVALUATION

• Problems of assessing arts policies• Causality: how do the arts have an effect?• Attribution: what effect do the arts have?• Measurement: ‘not everything that counts can

be counted; not everything that can be counted counts’

POLICY SUCCESS

• Success in whose terms?• In instrumental terms: the policy does what

government wants it to do• In attachment terms: the policy does what the

providers want it to do• In absolute terms: if only I knew

SO WHAT?

• Arts practitioners need to be clear as to their policy aims

• They need the appropriate mechanisms to show what they have done –

• And with what success• And they should never forget that the whole

process is deeply, deeply political