Failures in Cultural Participation

This open access book examines how and why the UK's approach towards increasing cultural participation has largely failed to address inequality and inequity in the subsidised cultural sector despite long-standing international policy discourse on this issue. It further examines why meaningful change in cultural policy has not been more forthcoming in the face of this apparent failure. This work examines how a culture of mistrust, blame, and fear between policymakers, practitioners, and participants has resulted in a policy environment that engenders overstated aims, accepts mediocre quality evaluations, encourages narratives of success, and lacks meaningful critical reflection. It shows through extensive field work with cultural professionals and participants how the absence of criticality, transparency, and honesty limits the potential for policy learning, which the authors argue is a precondition to any radical policy change and is necessary for developing a greater understanding of the social construction of policy problems. The book presents a new framework that encourages more open and honest conversations about failure in the cultural sector to support learning strategies that can help avoid these failures in the future.

This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access Informed by theories about the value and importance of learning from failure in policymaking Shifts the debate from the 'value' of culture to considerations of how policies can be designed and implemented Argues for an honest and transparent acknowledgement of failure at individual, organisational and governmental levels

Auteur
Leila Jancovich is Professor in Cultural Policy and Participation, School of Performance and Cultural Industries, at the University of Leeds, UK.
David Stevenson is Dean of the School of Arts, Social Sciences and Management, at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK.

Contenu
Introduction.- Histories of failures.- Thinking about failing.- The failures of policy.- Failing at the frontlines.- Failing the participant.- A failure framework.