From CEMA to the Arts Council: Cultural Authority, Participation and the Question of ‘Value’ in Early Post-war Britain

Abstract

This chapter offers a close analysis of the short but crucial period that saw the establishment of the Arts Council of Great BritainArts Council of Great Britain from the ashes of the wartime Council for the Encouragement of Music and the ArtsCouncil for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) (CEMA) following the end of the Second World War. It throws light on the ideas, hierarchies of cultural valuesCultural value, power relations and notions of artistic qualityArtistic quality that are embedded in this historyHistory and reflected in the resulting cultural policiesCultural policy(ies). This historyHistory and its connection to the British adult education movementBritish adult education movement have been explored previously, though here I am focusing on identifying and analysing their unacknowledged yet persisting legacy in contemporary policy debates. The ultimate objective of the chapter is to demonstrate how crucial fault lines between different approaches to conceiving the value of cultureCulture and desirable forms of cultural participationCultural participation that were already perceptible in the historyHistory of CEMACouncil for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) (having roots in the interwar debates around adult educationAdult education) came to be consolidated as the arts councilArts Council was formed in 1946. The original contribution the chapter makes to contemporary debates around the so-called participationParticipation agenda (Jancovich 2017) and the value of everyday forms of creativity and cultural expression is to both historicise and problematise their recent surge of popularity. Current understandings of the renewed interest in everyday participationEveryday participation and creativity, and cultural democracyCultural democracy will remain forever limited without awareness of their long historyHistory within twentieth-century British cultural politics and policy.

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