Background information, lecture schedules, assignment details and reading lists for Dr O'Brien's 2011-12 module in Contemporary UK Cultural Policy.

Slides from Dr O'Brien's final lecture on contemporary UK cultural policy.

The conclusion to the course is a discussion of Coalition cultural policy. Coalition policy is compared with New Labour’s approach and similarities and differences are suggested. The need to deal with the financial crisis is show to be the dominant frame for Coalition policy, creating the backdrop for strategic priorities around the Olympics, digital provision and innovation and new forms of funding for cultural organisations. The successes and failures of the early phase of Coalition cultural policy are discussed, including the abolition of various quangos, museums policy, cultural education and the move from Public Service Agreement targets to departmental milestones and business plans. Areas of continuity between New Labour and the Coalition are a major point of discussion, as the lecture suggests the issues explored in lecture one, of identity, governance and administration in modernity, remain the same for both New Labour and the Coalition. The lecture concludes by considering what areas have remained unexplored on the course and by suggesting the importance of engaging with cultural policy to offer a critique of the market failure model that dominates contemporary UK public administration.

The concluding lecture begins with a case study of the BBC as an example of the themes of the course. The lecture begins by exploring the critiques and defences of the BBC’s part in contemporary British culture, before moving to analyse the BBC’s role in urban regeneration and management reform at the BBC. These two discussions link back to the first and second lectures of the course, showing the continued contested nature of culture, space and place, as well as showing the debates around the effects of ‘audit culture’ on the organisation of the BBC. The lecture concludes by asking what kind of citizens are created by both the BBC’s management structures and its use of social scientific survey techniques to understand consumer satisfaction.

Slides from Dr O'Brien's lecture on public value in cultural policy.

Part two of lecture four explores three case studies of the use of public value in cultural policy. The first case study, of Arts Council England’s Arts Debate, shows how public value was used as a form of institutional learning. The second, of the Heritage Lottery Fund’s use of public value, sees the term as a measurement framework. The final case study, of the BBC’s use of public value, presents the concept as a defensive strategy against ideological critiques and funding cuts. All three of these uses serve to illustrate the lack of coherence associated with the term public value and the lecture concludes by suggesting its usefulness maybe passed. In keeping with ideas of creative industries, culture-led regeneration, social inclusion and evidence based policy making, public value’s associations with New Labour mean it is no longer the right language with which to engage with government.

The fourth lecture discusses the concept of public value. The first part of the lecture introduces the context of the development of public value, including ideas around New Public Management (NPM), New Labour’s approach to government and the limitations of the performance management techniques associated with NPM. The lecture then describes the development of public value, from its origins in Mark Moore’s work through to its current, fragmented, use in British public administration today. Following this discussion the lecture concludes with a discussion of how public value has been used in cultural policy, as the idea of cultural value.

Slides from Dr Dave O'Brien's lecture, Creative Work and Cultural Participation.

The second part of lecture three is concerned with creative work. It outlines ideas of creative industries, touching on key explanations for the rise of creative industries discourses. The lecture then links creative industries to the rise of entrepreneurialism and the importance of the concept of the creative worker as a response to ongoing dilemmas within the British economy. The lecture unpacks the ambivalences of creative labour, outlining issues of exploitation, self-management and conceptions of failure associated with precarious labour. The lecture contrasts these issues with the pleasures of creative work and the idea of ‘good’ work as a way to understand the emancipatory potential offered by creative work. The lecture concludes by a discussion of creative education and the role of arts and humanities in producing the disciplined creative worker.

Lecture three considers contemporary cultural participation and its relationship with creative work. Both parts of the lecture explore the individualisation thesis outlined in lecture one, contrasting this concept with Foucauldian approaches to managing and governing the self. The first part of the lecture discusses cultural consumption in contemporary British society, exploring who does why and why, against the backdrop of the ethos of creative workers. The cultural ‘omnivore’ thesis is outlined and critiqued, suggesting the importance of expertise, social status and social class to understand cultural consumption. The lecture also describes the limits of social scientific attempts to measure participation and consumption of culture in Britain today, how those attempts may constitute as well as describe our understanding of cultural consumption, and the effects of the digital revolution in distribution on measuring participation.