Drawing on interviews with UK-based arts professionals, Kristina Kolbe assesses the impact of austerity politics and privatisation on the sector.
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Unequal entanglements: how arts practitioners reflect on the impact of intensifying economic inequality (Taylor & Francis Online)
Austerity politics and privatisation processes have had a profound impact on the arts and museum sector, and the UK presents a prime site for investigating these dynamics. Foregrounding the voices of cultural practitioners themselves, this paper discusses the ways in which UK-based museum curators, gallery directors, artists and art consultants reflect on their work amidst contemporary conditions of deepening economic inequality.
While the country saw a period of nationalisation in the years after the end of the second world war, the following Thatcher era drastically opened the path for privatisation and commercialisation, increasing the financial incentives for private and cooperate arts sponsorship via tax breaks or Public-Private Partnerships (e.g. Wu, 2002).
This process continued during the New Labour years which not only incentivised corporate arts sponsorship further but also pushed for the adoption of economic rationales within the cultural sector more widely, turning the latter into an increasingly entrepreneurial (creative) industry...Keep reading on Taylor & Francis Online.