Arts Council England in the 2000s: Towards Digital Era Governance?

Abstract

Arts Council England (ACE) is the main non-departmental public body (NPDB or quango) supporting the arts in England. As public funding increased in the 1990s and a dedicated department was created, arts policy became more politicized, drawing closer to the continental interventionist model while retaining idiosyncrasies such as additional funding through a national lottery, the discretionary dimension of local authority funding and the allocation of public funding at arm’s length from the DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and Sport). However, the latter’s capacity to stir ACE and its staff — who are not public servants — proved limited, causing contention between the traditionally reactive funding body and ministers looking for social and economic impacts and ultimately responsible before Parliament (Taylor, 1997; Doustaly, 2007). The end of the New Labour rule was associated with repeated attempts at modernizing ACE into an accountable and proactive development agency in a context of failing new public management (NPM) reforms, funding cuts and tensions with the arts community, and leading the organization to implement a wide-ranging restructuring (Doustaly and Gray, 2010). For cost-cutting and ideological reasons, the 2010 Coalition Government’s more distanced approach to arts policy has centred on pressure for efficiency, incentive to alternative funding, and civil society involvement as part of the Big Society Agenda.