Essay
Artists Shaping Policies Through Higher Art Education. How Visual Artists Develop Policies that Affect their Lives, Practices, and Careers
Abstract
This paper centralises visual artists in policymaking processes. It foregrounds the ways artists influence and determine the policies that affect their lives, practices, and careers through their higher art education in London (UK) art schools between 1986-2016. The uninvited and indirect processes by which artists are shaping policies using their education is captured through artsbased/informed methods developed for listening, analysing, and interpreting alongside grounded theory methodology. The practitioner-led approach is key to noticing and raising the subtle agitations in the actions and inactions that underscore artists’ role as policy progenitors. Artists’ relationships with professional development and their experiences of structureless pedagogies, which are aligned to artistic myth are foregrounded. Their acceptances, rejections, and reframing of their fine art curricula is where their influence in shaping policy sits.
Keywords
2022 (2)
Artists' Narratives in Cultural Policy and Management Research

Related Articles
Evaluation als moderatorische und mediatorische Intervention am Beispiel eines Tanzfestivals
Journal of Cultural Management 2017 (2)
Case Study
Activism and bottom-up narratives of change in Greek cultural policy: the case of #SupportArtWorkers
Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy
Case Study
Scheinbare Nebenschauplätze
Neue Allianz zwischen Kunst, Kulturtheorie und KulturmanagementYearbook for Culture Management 2013
Essay
Journal of Cultural Management 2018 (2)
Research Article
Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy
Research Article
Yearbook for Culture Management
Essay
© 2025, Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy
Keywords
- Aesthetics
- Higher Education
- Cultural Diplomacy and Foreign Cultural Policy
- Occupation
- Career and Professional Role
- Audience Development
- Audience Studies and Visitor Studies
- Visitor Motivations
- Business
- Covid Pandemic
- Democracy
- Digitalization
- Diversity
- Third Sector
- Empirical Aesthetics
- Development
- Ethics
- Evaluation
- Field Theory
- Festival
- Film
- Federalism
- Community Arts
- Societal Change
- Ideology
- Staging
- Career
- Communication
- Concert
- Creative Industries
- Creativity
- Crisis
- Culture
- arts organizations, cultural organizations
- Cultural Participation
- Cultural Change
- Fincancing The Arts
- Cultural Promotion Law
- Cultural History
- Cultural Management
- Cultural Economy
- Cultural Organizations
- Art Education
- Cultural Policy
- Cultural Production
- Cultural Sociology
- Art Education
- Cultural Understanding
- Arts Administration
- Cultural Industry
- Cultural Sciences
- Art
- Art Field
- Arts Research
- Artists
- Artistic Research
- Artistic Reputation
- Arts Management
- Arts Organizations
- Art education
- Arts Marketing
- Arts Administration
- Curating
- Leadership
- Literature
- Advocacy
- Management
- Marketing
- Market
- Media
- Methods Development
- Mexico
- Monumentalizing
- Museum
- Music
- Non-Visitor Studies
- Opera
- Orchestra
- Organization
- Political Expression
- Post-truth Politics
- Professional Role
- Audience
- Audience Development
- Law
- Government
- Role
- Socially Engaged Art
- Social Cohesion
- Social Change
- Social Cohesion
- Non-visitor Socio-demographics
- Socioculture
- State
- Symbolic capital
- Dance
- Participatory Justice
- Theatre
- Theatre Governance
- Theory Development
- Tourism
- Transformation
- Survey
- Entrepreneurship
- Urbanism
- Civil Society