LOCAL ARTS AND THE CREATIVE ECONOMY
Clive Gray
Reader in Cultural Policy
De 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
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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