Abstract
This paper explores the gap between museum policy and practice in the UnitedKingdom (UK) by offering empirical evidence from a comparative street-levelanalysis of museum services in Scotland, England and Wales. Exploringdevolution in cultural services from the ground-level using Lipsky’s (1980) ‘streetlevel’approach gives new insights to the role of ground-level workers in culturalpolicy. It shows that museum workers had an awareness of national policies, butimplementation was mainly influenced by a mixture of challenges in the everydaydelivery of the museum services studied. Museum workers understood policy assomething symbolic rather than relating to action, which reinforced policy distance.Workers at the ground-level had more similarities than differences throughoutScotland, England and Wales and the structural challenges within museum servicesindicated a complex negotiation that increased agency at the ground-level. Thesefindings outline the potential limitations of written national and international policyin the cultural sector as it is the activities, values and behaviours at the front-lineof cultural services that ultimately creates policy in the cultural sector. 1Key words: Cultural policy; museum workers; UK devolution; policy distance; street-levelanalysis; Lipsky
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