MINISTRIES OF CULTURE RANKED LOWDOWN…

The 6^th International Conference on Cultural Policy Research was held last week in Jyvaskala in Finland – lots of interesting (and some not so interesting) research – sadly there seems to be no mechanism for sharing the more interesting papers and presentations with the wider arts and cultural community. Conference delegates can download the papers from the conference organiser’s website, but the rest of the world has no chance. One of the more entertaining papers (from Clive Gray & Melvin Wingfield, De Montfort Univ) assessed the importance of the UK Ministry of Culture (Dept for Culture, Media & Sport, DCMS) compared to other ministries. Using a range of indicators (expenditure, law-making, policy centrality, ministerial career trajectories, press coverage, departmental age, executive centrality, manifesto coverage and staffing patterns), the research concluded that the DCMS ranked 11^th out of 13 – the only ones with a lower ranking were the Dept for International Development (foreign aid et al) and the Dept for Energy & Climate Change….hmmm…