A PART TO PLAY?

Abstract

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was established within months of Labour’s 1997 election victory. From the outset, it intended to ensure the effective delivery of government objectives across its sectors. DCMS’s modus operandi was predicated on the assumption that there is an implicit, highly determined and linear relationship between its funding, its policies, their implementation and outcomes. However, a series of recent statements by DCMS’s ministers suggest that this paradigm, such as it is, has come to be recognised as flawed. Given the burgeoning of current cultural policy research (not least within academia), this article considers whether, on the basis of its current form, it might have anything to contribute to solving DCMS’s dilemmas. In doing so, it examines the development of current cultural policy under Labour; the nature of the conceptual inconsistencies identified; the type of cultural policy research currently being undertaken; and the nature of the relationship between government cultural agencies and external, independent researchers.