Mapping the arts: industry concentrations,distribution, and change in the US, 1980–2010

This paper studies arts industries in all 366 US metropolitan statistical areas between 1980 and 2010. Our analysis provides evidence that the arts are an important component of many regional economies, but also highlights their volatility. After radical growth and diffusion between 1980 and 2000, in the last decade, the arts industries are defined more by shrinkage and reconcentration in fewer metropolitan areas. Further, we find that the vast majority of metros have strengths in particular sets of arts industries. As we discuss in the conclusion, these conditions present challenges and opportunities for urban cultural policy that goes beyond the current focus on the arts as consumption amenities.     

Strategies of Policy Advocacy Organizations and Their Theoretical Affinities: Evidence from Q‐Methodology

Policy advocacy is an increasingly important function for many nonprofit organizations, yet their advocacy activities have largely escaped theoretical grounding. The literature on nonprofits has described how they engage in policy advocacy, without linking them to theories of policy change. The policy studies literature, on the other hand, has explained how various forms of influence result in policy change, but has largely ignored organizational perspectives on those processes. These two literatures remain largely disconnected. Drawing upon interviews with a purposive sample of policy advocacy directors at 31 nonprofit organizations, this study applies Q‐methodology to identify and describe six distinct policy advocacy strategies employed by the organizations, and their resonant theoretical views of policy processes. These findings suggest strategic approaches for nonprofits seeking to influence policy processes. They also enhance the academic literature on policy processes by adding the advocates’ views and expectations. Implications for further research are also identified.     

Partisanship,policy entrepreneurs and the market for ideas: what we can learn from policy failure

ABSTRACT

The Office of Living Victoria (OLV), was established in 2011 by the then Liberal-National Party Coalition Government. It was created in response to a water crisis and intended to revolutionise water management and delivery, challenging established authorities and practices consolidated under the previous Labor government in Victoria. There was a decidedly partisan motivation for its conception. The drive for new ideas and innovation created opportunities for policy entrepreneurs who won the competition against more conventional research advocacy, and determined the agenda of the new agency, in the process curbing an existing policy network. Yet within a short period, this initiative was mired in scandal, and ended in 2014 having failed to achieve its purposes. This article explores this instance of policy failure, assessing the policy trajectory of the OLV in relation to the concepts of partisanship, policy entrepreneurship, and policy networks.     

Arts practitioners in the cultural policy process: spear-carriers or speaking parts?

This paper considers the argument that arts practitioners are rarely acknowledged by cultural policy researchers as being more than marginally involved in policy-making. Drawing on public policy analysis which pays attention to a breadth of policy actors, and on the concept of civil society, the paper examines whether these approaches can help to better investigate and understand the role of arts practitioners in the policy process. It discusses this subject in relation to cultural policy in general and in the specific arena of British arts policy, focusing on original case-study research of playwrights’ organisations and playwriting policy. The case-study evidence demonstrates that arts practitioners – through involvement in policy debate and implementation, and their own initiatives and activities – are frequently engaged in the policy process and thus more broadly in the democratic public domain. Understanding of cultural policy development is therefore considerably weakened if the role of practitioners is ignored.     

中国古代琥珀艺术——商至元

琥珀作为艺术载体在我国的出现,至少可以追溯到距今三千余年前的四川广汉三星堆遗址时期,其使用一直延绵不断。本文主要利用考古出土材料,并结合文献,对自商至元(不包括辽代)历代琥珀制品的题材、造型、工艺、使用及其文化内涵作全面的梳理和探讨。文章认为,琥珀在我国古代是作为与水晶、玛瑙、琉璃、犀、玳瑁、玉石、金等相当的贵重物品进入人们视野的。其使用多限于皇室、贵族和高官,是使用者地位、财富和奢华生活的象征。琥珀主要作为小件饰品使用,其次用作印章。至于琥珀用作杯、盅、盏、枕、碟、盒等实用器皿,虽有记载,但非常罕见。琥珀制品的造型,与同时代其他贵重材质器物的造型相同或相似,其制作以圆雕为主,少量片雕、镂雕,加刻简单的阴线表现细部特征。历代琥珀艺术呈现的面貌各不相同。     

New technologies in cultural institutions: theory,evidence and policy implications

Publicly-funded cultural institutions such as theatre companies, symphony orchestras, museums, libraries and so on are increasingly engaging with new technologies as a means of improving their operational efficiency and extending the range of ways in which they pursue their cultural missions. For example, opera companies are broadcasting performances by satellite to cinemas, and art museums are using the Internet to show virtual exhibitions. These developments have implications for funding authorities who need to update their policy approaches to encompass a range of new technological phenomena. This paper provides a framework for assessing technological innovation in cultural institutions, and discusses the ramifications of such a framework for cultural policy. The paper is illustrated using the results of a recent research project that evaluated the UK National Theatre’s NT Live experiment and the Tate Gallery’s use of a web-based exhibition as strategies to expand their audience reach.     

Competition or exhibition? The Olympic arts and cultural policy rhetoric

Though they are widely forgotten today, the modern Olympic Games once offered competitive medals for art. This tradition, which lasted through the seven summer Games held from 1912 to 1948, found artists competing for gold much as athletes do now. These artists represented their nation in judged competitive events showcasing artistic works. In its initial form, the ‘pentathlon of the muses,’ as it was called, included competitive events in Architecture, Musical Composition, Sculpture, Painting, and Literature. This paper considers the history of these arts competitions and their eventual demise as a study in cultural policy, arguing that no understanding of cultural policy is sufficient unless it considers the rhetorical factors that contribute to its formation. Without abandoning the Foucauldian backbone of cultural-policy studies, this argument makes an interdisciplinary plea to open cultural policy studies to the field of rhetorical scholarship, which it has almost wholly neglected to date.