Term Paper: British Cultural Environment

Sample Term Paper

Since the ruling by New Labor Party, the cultural accessibility expanded remarkably by various institutional support, increased cultural budget, social integration policies. Moreover, by the expansion of cultural infrastructure and increasing numbers of applying lottery fund for arts, British cultural environment has changed and improved.[1] However, on the other hand, there was a criticism that the principle of art support preceded the artistic excellence and it harms the freedom of arts.

Besides, there was a rising concern that these schemes could neglect the quality of arts due to its too much widen approaches. In particular, the artists should spend long time for writing application report for showing their works’ contribution to the society or economy. Consequently, there were complaints that the substantial expansion of funding for arts is almost same as non-exist, due to the spending too much money on the education and participation rather than the creation of excellence.  Compare with the times with Conservative government when the support for art was shrunk by the emphasizing the efficiency and economics, last 10 years of Labor party’s contribution to arts became abundant in large quantities. Nevertheless, a lot of artists and people in art organisations asserted that the culture policy of Tony Blair is not big different with Margaret Thatcher’s strategy because of aiming on the economic profits and social roles of arts rather than focusing on the artistic excellence. In other words, there was doubt about the British cultural policy was a valuable for developing the intrinsic value of art and for creating excellent work.