Between a Rock and a Hard Place: England’s Cultural Policy Landscape under Austerity and Devolution
What makes a town or city culturally vibrant, and who gets to decide? Which arts venues, cultural amenities and heritage spaces should communities be able to access—not only for their own quality of life, but for the liveability and identity of their neighbourhoods?
This inaugural lecture explores the spatial politics of cultural policy in England and the tensions it creates for cultural placemaking and democracy. Following a narrative that travels northwards from Macclesfield in Cheshire across Greater Manchester to Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire, Professor Abi Gilmore traces two decades of research into cultural infrastructure, the public policies that shape it, and the governance and funding systems that have produced stark geographical inequalities in cultural access and provision.
Postwar English cultural policy is characterised by the arm’s length Arts Council model, free entry to museums and galleries and a heritage sector buoyed by National Lottery investment, plus the midwifery of the creative industries under New Labour. More recently, attention has turned to ‘left behind places’ through Levelling Up investment into culture and heritage as tools for tackling inequality and reviving high streets, with a new national Towns of Culture competition just announced.
Yet these policy innovations sit uneasily alongside a decade of deep cuts, and despite their cultural ambitions, there is no national strategic framework. Local government—the largest public funder of culture—has seen its cultural spending halved in real terms. Instrumentalism is entrenched, with culture expected to deliver economic growth, improve health outcomes, and repair social fractures in exchange for support. Combined with a quiet Butskellism, cultural infrastructure remains discretionary, vulnerable, and unevenly distributed.
Drawing on a long-term engagement with “crap towns” and “cultural deserts”, alongside pioneering Mayoral Strategic Authorities and Cities of Culture, the lecture reflects on how austerity, devolution, and politics are reshaping England’s cultural landscape. It asks what kinds of cultural policies are needed and how they might honour and represent the structures of feeling and dynamics of place —when cultural infrastructure sits between the rock of local precarity and the hard place of methodological nationalism.
Schedule
4.30pm????Wine Reception
5.00pm????Introduction from Thomas Schmidt, SALC Head of School
5.15pm????Abigail Gilmore's Inaugural Lecture
6.00pm????A response to Abigail's lecture from Distinguished Scholar, Andy Mycock
6:10pm????Q&A session
6.30pm????Inaugural ends
