Abstract:As Western governments re-examine the economic policies of John Maynard Keynes to solve a global financial crisis believed to be almost as severe as the Great Depression, this article examines his influence on arts policy. The article articulates and examines the central assumptions that underlie the arm's length policy model, such as Keynes's preference for semi-autonomous non-governmental bodies, and locates the sources of those assumptions and ideas in Keynes's political philosophy and his involvement in higher education. Knowing this history enables policymakers and arts administrators to recognize how contemporary policy still reflects this thinking.Author bio: Anna Rosser Upchurch, PhD, is a Lecturer in Cultural Industries at the School for Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds in Leeds, UK. She is interested in the history of ideas about the arts in society and in the position of creative individuals and organizations in market economies. Looking at this history is essential to understanding contemporary policy. For by examining Keynes's ideas about the purpose of policy, and how those ideas were reflected in the organization and practices of the Arts Council of Great Britain, policymakers, analysts, and arts administrators can recognize how contemporary policies still reflect his thinking. Certainly aspects of his legacy have been challenged and debated vigorously, notably his preferences for art forms and institutions of 'high culture' -opera, classical music, ballet, theatre, and art museums. However, this article articulates and examines some of the central assumptions that underlie the 'arm's length' policy model, assumptions that continue to inform contemporary policy, even as the policy practices and funding preferences might be changed to accommodate broader definitions of art and culture.Keynes hoped for a moral and ethical transition in society and his economic and cultural policies sought to create the conditions for that transition. In this article, I draw 3 upon interpretations of Keynes's underlying moral approach to public policy, and by his 'moral' approach, I mean the social and economic conditions that good government policy should accomplish for its citizens. I examine his preference for semi-autonomous, nongovernmental bodies, the policy mechanism that underlies the 'arm's length' model. Finally I examine the ideas about 'excellence' and professional standards. I draw from Keynes's unpublished correspondence and his published writings, interpretations of his policy work by economists, published histories of the Arts Council, and analyses of arts policy in the United Kingdom. Keynes's Economic Thought and His Idea of 'the State'His publication in 1936 of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money was welcomed by economists and established Keynes's reputation as the leading economist of his generation. His theoretical work in macroeconomics was emerging as major features of the welfare state were being evaluated and proposed. Along with Wil...

The article examines the origins of the arts council movement in the ideas of the Bloomsbury Group and John Maynard Keynes. The Bloomsbury Groups' sense of experimentation and flexibility, their willingness to take action to create new institutions, and their distrust of bureaucracy, influenced Keynes's development of a new model for state patronage of the arts in 1946. He took an organization established during the Second World War to employ artists and organize morale-boosting tours of the performing and visual arts, and oversaw its development into the Arts Council of Great Britain, the first such arts council. His model -making grants of public funds through semi-autonomous government bodies to private individuals and privately operated arts institutions -became a standard form of public funding for the arts by the end of the twentieth century in many countries around the world.

Aim of the SeriesNew Directions in Cultural Policy Research encourages theoretical and empirical contributions which enrich and develop the fi eld of cultural policy studies. Since its emergence in the 1990s in Australia and the United Kingdom and its eventual diffusion in Europe, the academic fi eld of cultural policy studies has expanded globally as the arts and popular culture have been re-positioned by city, regional, and national governments, and international bodies, from the margins to the centre of social and economic development in both rhetoric and practice. The series invites contributions in all of the following: arts policies, the politics of culture, cultural industries policies (the 'traditional' arts such as performing and visual arts, crafts), creative industries policies (digital, social media, broadcasting and fi lm, and advertising), urban regeneration and urban cultural policies, regional cultural policies, the politics of cultural and creative labour, the production and consumption of popular culture, arts education policies, cultural heritage and tourism policies, and the history and politics of media and communications policies. The series will refl ect current and emerging concerns of the fi eld such as, for example, cultural value, community cultural development, cultural diversity, cultural sustainability, lifestyle culture and eco-culture, planning for the intercultural city, cultural planning, and cultural citizenship.

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