‘Policies Aren’t Pieces of Paper’: Tussles and Tactics in Action-Oriented and Agile Cultural Policy Research

Abstract

Too often policies are thought of decrees, immovable objects, binding forces, and something that is delivered and received rather than made and negotiated on an ongoing daily basis. This chapter reflects on a five-year collaboration between the African Centre for Cities and the City of Cape Town’s Arts & Culture Branch, focusing on what it means to make and do policy locally, on an everyday basis, and in the context of fiscal restraints (exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic) and shifting politics and urban priorities. The chapter starts by introducing four interconnected ways in which to approach cultural and urban policy-making through collaborative policy research: as embodied, emplaced, enacted, and embedded. It then locates Cape Town as a city of contradictions, a creative city that is often at odds with its own creative identity and shows that while cultural policy exists, there is a mismatch between these ambitions and the fiscal reality. Despite these challenges, there are municipal champions within the governance arrangement of the City who are working to leverage policy for more inclusive and emplaced aims, and the chapter turns to consider Knowledge Transfer Programme and scholar-municipal collaborations in action-oriented policy research, paying pays particular attention to cultural mapping and planning as an antidote to elite-centric urban cultural objectives. Finally the chapter returns to what this means for local action-oriented cultural policy research, arguing for how emplaced and embodied policy knowledge and practice can be enacted in situated and embedded ways.