Skip to main content
Palgrave Macmillan

Failures in Cultural Participation

  • Book
  • Open Access
  • © 2023

You have full access to this open access Book

Overview

  • This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access
  • Informed by theories about the value and importance of learning from failure in policymaking
  • Shifts the debate from the ‘value’ of culture to considerations of how policies can be designed and implemented
  • Argues for an honest and transparent acknowledgement of failure at individual, organisational and governmental levels

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Cultural Participation (PSCP)

Buy print copy

Hardcover Book USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

About this book

This open access book examines how and why the UK's approach towards increasing cultural participation has largely failed to address inequality and inequity in the subsidised cultural sector despite long-standing international policy discourse on this issue. It further examines why meaningful change in cultural policy has not been more forthcoming in the face of this apparent failure. This work examines how a culture of mistrust, blame, and fear between policymakers, practitioners, and participants has resulted in a policy environment that engenders overstated aims, accepts mediocre quality evaluations, encourages narratives of success, and lacks meaningful critical reflection. It shows through extensive field work with cultural professionals and participants how the absence of criticality, transparency, and honesty limits the potential for policy learning, which the authors argue is a precondition to any radical policy change and is necessary for developing a greater understanding of the social construction of policy problems. The book presents a new framework that encourages more open and honest conversations about failure in the cultural sector to support learning strategies that can help avoid these failures in the future.

Similar content being viewed by others

Keywords

Table of contents (7 chapters)

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Leila Jancovich

  • Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK

    David Stevenson

About the authors

Leila Jancovich is Professor in Cultural Policy and Participation, School of Performance and Cultural Industries, at the University of Leeds, UK. 


David Stevenson is Dean of the School of Arts, Social Sciences and Management, at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK.


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Failures in Cultural Participation

  • Authors: Leila Jancovich, David Stevenson

  • Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Cultural Participation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16116-2

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-16115-5Published: 08 December 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-16116-2Published: 07 December 2022

  • Series ISSN: 2661-8699

  • Series E-ISSN: 2661-8702

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XV, 162

  • Number of Illustrations: 5 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Sociology of Culture, Cultural Heritage, Public Policy

Publish with us