New Labour's cultural turn: some tensions in contemporary educational and cultural policy

Abstract

The election of a Labour government in Britain, after 18 years of Conservative rule, has seen the emergence of a new educational discourse, based on a distinctive combination of cultural, economic and social themes. In this article, we identify the components of the discourse, and explore how it is currently deployed in arguments for educational change. Specifically, our focus is on two recent documents: All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (NACCCE 1999), produced by an Advisory Committee appointed by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS); and Making Movies Matter (FEWG 1999) by the Film Education Working Group, set up by the British Film Institute at the request of the DCMS. Embodying in separate ways the features of the emergent discourse, these texts also position themselves very differently in relation to current educational policy. Through a critique of the reports, we identify some of the broader difficulties of the ‘cultural turn’ in education, and the possibility of a more productive alternative.