Researchers, bureaucrats and the lifeworlds of cultural policy

Rimi Khan.

International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol 25(4), pp.528-540.

2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2017.1341498

This paper reflects on the value of cultural policy research, particularly when such research forms part of projects that seek to produce insights or ‘outcomes’ that are useful to non-university research partners. The paper draws from the author’s involvement in a project examining cultural diversity in the arts that was funded as part of the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project scheme. It addresses Eleonora Belfiore’s provocation that this kind of instrumental cultural policy research routinely amounts to ‘bullshit.’ However, in order to understand the critical function of such research, there needs to be greater attention to the lifeworlds of cultural policy and the multiplicity of the policy-making process. This multiplicity both complicates the possibilities for usefulness in policy research, at the same time that it enables such research to be generative in unpredictable ways.

The project described in this paper was funded by the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project Scheme (LP110100039). The project was also partly funded by Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria, Office of Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship and City of Whittlesea.