Cultural Quarters: Principles and Practice - Hardcover

Roodhouse, Simon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1841501395 ISBN 13: 9781841501390

Verlag: INTELLECT LTD, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

This definitive book provides a conceptual context for cultural quarters through a detailed discussion concerning the principles of urban design and planning. To examine these issues, the book presents several case studies drawn from Northern England, Ireland and Vienna to position the emergence of specific cultural areas within a historical and social context and the economics of maintaining the respective districts.

Extending this investigation, the author provides an explicit analysis of Bolton Borough Council’s moves towards establishing a cultural sector in the town centre, with references to previous funding models employed by Birmingham City Council and the British Museum. The book offers a concise illustration of how cultural practice is maintained and expanded within an urban environment. This single volume, packed with detail, can be used in higher education courses to support the study of cultural policy, management and regeneration.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Simon Roodhouse was the editor of the Creative Industries Journal. His research focused on the relationship between the arts and industry.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Cultural Quarters

Principles and Practice

By Simon Roodhouse

Intellect Ltd.

Copyright © 2006 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84150-139-0

Contents

Foreword by Rt Hon Lord Smith of Finsbury to "Cultural Quarters: Principles and Practice", 
Acknowledgements, 
Note on the Author, 
Contributors, 
Introduction, 
1 The Cultural Quarter Definitional Landscape, 
2 Cultural Quarter Practice in England, 
3 Features and Benefits of Cultural Quarters, Internationally, 
4 Putting the Principles into Practice: A Cultural Quarter for a Proud Northern Town, 
5 The Geographic, Demographic and Infra-structure Context, 
6 Key Influencing Factors in Establishing a Cultural Quarter, 
7 The Nuts and Bolts: Outputs, Resources, Procurement Routes and Management, 
8 Public Sector Decision-Making? Two Crescents: One Place?, 
9 Modelling the Cultural Quarter in Practice, 
10 Conclusion, 
Bibliography, 
Appendix 1 – The Bolton Town Action Plan, 

CHAPTER 1

The Cultural Quarter Definitional Landscape

This chapter sets out to explore the economic and cultural arguments for Cultural Quarters and the consequent definitional and policy contortions that have influenced the development of these projects. In addition the principles, criteria for success and characteristics of Cultural Quarters are discussed from an urban planning perspective. As a result it provides a useful context for consideration of the case studies in the following chapters.

1.1 Creating Sustainable Cultures: Do We Need Them?

Creating sustainable cultures seems on the face of it to be a public-sector debate around supporting a particular cultural establishment, and how best to justify the funding required to maintain the status quo. However, it is important to start from a position that individual people create and sustain cultures, not the bureaucratic infrastructures that are busily manufactured for the purposes of supporting an established cultural heritage.

Much of this debate can be symbolised in the conception, construction and execution of the Millennium Dome in London, which is a project without roots or individuality, dominated by committees and a project-management view of the world. There was a lack of engagement with creative individuality and risk, which was symbolised by the appointment and then rapid departure of a Creative Director who was not replaced. It is then necessary if sustainability is a desirable goal, that there is a serious readjustment of the way we perceive and support cultural activity by focusing on individual creativity. If not there is a danger of continuing with what we have always done, an exclusion of critical analysis or reflection and ignoring the basis of culture: that is people, risk, change and creativity.

1.2 Conceptual Confusion: Arts Industry, Heritage Industry, Creative Industries or Cultural Industries?

Successive United Kingdom (UK) national governments and their agencies have defined and redrawn boundaries, resulting in continuous public cultural policy and practice turbulence since 1945, commencing with the establishment of the Arts Council of Great Britain (Pick, J., & Anderton, M., 1999). The pragmatic determination of these boundaries which are definitions with no obvious rationale for inclusion or exclusion lends itself to an interpretation of a public sector domain engaged in restrictive practice. This ensures the boundaries are constrained enough to match the level of available resources at any given time.

It is, perhaps, more to do with the government administrative machinery responding to national policy by providing a manageable and controllable framework for the allocation of public funds rather than a rational empirically informed inclusive system, hence measurable, thus conforming to the requirements of evidence-based policy (Solesbury, W., 2001). Urban regeneration (Roodhouse, S., and Roodhouse, M., 1997) and the introduction of creative industries (Roodhouse, S., 2003) by the New Labour administration are examples of this practice.

This intrinsic public structural framework works against interaction and connectivity. It encourages isolationism between national, regional and local government and agencies by relying on departmentalisation and compartmentalisation as the organisational means of delivery.

As an illustration, culture resides within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and is also found in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who fund the British Council (British Council, 1998, 2004); the Ministry of Defence which resources a substantial number of museums, galleries and musical bands the Department of Trade and Industry which supports creative industries through the Small Business Service including the export effort of these businesses; the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (Allen, K., Shaw, P., 2001); and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) which provides entry to work and workforce development in the cultural field (North West Universities Association, 2004). This excludes the devolved arrangements for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

This complexity and fractured nature of cultural practice combined with definitional fluidity, found at national level, is a major contributor to the lack of policy cohesion in the field.

It is equally confusing, at regional level, with DCMS sponsored Cultural Consortia, the Arts Council, the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), the Sports Council, the Tourist Boards, Sector Skills Councils (SSCs), and local authorities along with the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), Small Business Service, including Business Link, not to mention the plethora of sub-regional intermediaries funded from the public purse, all pursuing differing cultural agendas (Hamilton, C., Scullion, A., 2002).

In practice, there is little cohesion between these organisations or initiatives such as cultural and museum hubs with the development of Cultural Quarters, sometimes resulting in duplicated effort, which leads to additional public resource allocated to coordination. This may be more effectively utilized in direct intervention to assist the growth of cultural businesses by establishing Cultural Quarters (Roodhouse, S., 2004).

Although attempts are made at overarching regional strategies, there is not as yet a shared understanding of and agreement to a definitional framework to operate and evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies.

A useful point of departure is the conventional view of culture succinctly encapsulated in the Raymond Williams definition (Williams R., 1981):

"a description of a particular way of life which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning, but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour."

He interprets culture in the widest definitional sense; an inclusive attitude consisting of structured and patterned ways of learning, and explains the artistic component of culture as:

"Individuals in groups – characteristically respond to and make meaningful the circumstances in which they are placed by virtue of their positions in society and in history."

This definitional framework leads us into a wider understanding of our society, so for example Williams would recognise Britain's most popular tourist attraction, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, visited by over 7 million people in 1998, and with more hotel beds than in all of Greece and its islands combined, as a cultural...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: INTELLECT LTD
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1841501395
• ISBN 13: 9781841501390
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 149
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar