I wrote about Robert Palmer's '5 challenges to the landscape of cultural policies in Europe' earlier, over on the re.volution blog. Go see.
You'll also be able to see peers signing up to be part of this experiment in 'non-state actors', to use one of Palmer's phrases, coming together to work together in response to changing landscapes. (I doubt very much he uses phrases like that except when in official mode.)
His five factors are, in very executive summary, nationalism, cuts, new values, mainstreaming and receding state governance. This feels very apposite, especially in a week when the UK has (unbelievably) stepped even further out of arrangements which actually shape the EU and UK. (Don't get me started...)
There are some who feel that cultural policy is a bit of a luxury these days, and we could just have funding criteria and fund the survivors, but I'm not one. I still think we should ask government and all investors - and all recipients of public money to grapple with ideas and facts long enough to be able to state their 'basic principles and associated guidelines, formulated and enforced by the governing body of an organization, to direct and limit its actions in pursuit of long-term goals', as one definition of policy has it.
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