Contemporary UK Cultural Policy

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 f...

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 ...

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 H...

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 limitat...

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 entrepren...

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 managin...

Dr O'Brien's slides from lecture 2, After the 'golden age' of culture and urban regeneration.

The second part of this lecture presents a detailed case study of Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008. The lecture outlines the impact of hosting the European Capital of Culture, across a series of domains, including social, economic and artist...

This lecture is the first of four case studies illustrating the issues discussed in lecture one. The opening part of this lecture discusses culture-led regeneration and its preponderance within British cultural policy during the period of the New Labou...

Dr O'Brien's slides from lecture 1, From Government to Governance: The uneasy place of cultural policy.

The final part of the introductory lecture offers a counterpoint to ideas of individualisation with the theories of governmentality associated with Michel Foucault. Governmentality is explored alongside the reflexivity of social scientific methods, par...

Part two of this introductory lecture covers the transition from government to governance within UK politics and outlines the significance of this change for cultural policy. Governance, a key concept for understanding the second lecture on urban regen...

This introductory lecture sets out the core themes of the course- contemporary cultural policy against the backdrop of changes to British public administration and British society. The first part of the lecture sets out the ‘problem’ of cultural po...