The Origins of the Arts Council Movement

This important new book offers an intellectual history of the 'arts council' policy model, identifying and exploring the ideas embedded in the model and actions of intellectuals, philanthropists and wealthy aesthetes in its establishment in the mid-twentieth century. The book examines the history of arts advocacy for national arts policies in the UK, Canada and the USA, offering an interdisciplinary approach that combines social and intellectual history, political philosophy and literary analysis. The book has much to offer academics, cultural policy and management students, artists, arts managers, arts advocates, cultural policymakers and anyone interested in the history and current moment of public arts funding in the West. 

Anna Rosser Upchurch is Lecturer in Cultural Policy at the University of Leeds, UK. After a career in arts management and policy in the United States working for a range of publicly and privately funded organisations, she earned a PhD in cultural policy studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She is co-editor of Humanities in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Utility and Markets (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), with Eleonora Belfiore, and her research interests include the historiography and theory of cultural policy, the history of ideas about the arts and humanities in society, including issues of 'value' and 'impact', and histories of women activists in cultural organisations.