Cultural policy and the local state : Sheffield, 1960-1987.

This thesis considers the organisation and development of local state cultural policies in post-war Britain, taking as the central focus the policy concerns of Sheffield City Council in the period 1960-1987.The concept of the local state is developed to discuss local policies as constructed within a framework set by the central state but not wholly determined by it. National cultural policy: the political, social andeconomic factors that impinge upon it; and its relation to the local state, form a basis for the examination of local state cultural policy.The objectives of national public cultural provision have been informed by particular definitions of culture and by post-war themes of the preservation of national cultural heritage and of increasing public access to it. These themes were central to the post-war political policies of social consensus.A complex relation between public cultural provision and the developing mass market reveals the contradictions within the state's political and cultural objectives. In dealing with these contradictions the local state reveals both its subordination to the national state and its own particular configuration of the roles of state and market.The three Case-Studies were chosen to illustrate key issues. The first case-study considers the way preservation of traditional high cultural forms has been negotiated. The second discusses the development of recreation policies, formed within the primary structures of the municipal authorities. The more recent developmentof policies for the cultural industries as inclusive ofmarket based cultural forms, provides the focus for thethird case-study. The thesis has an empirical base, much of the material was drawn from interviews with Councillors and Officers of Sheffield City Council; from Council Committee papers; from attending policy group meetings; and from discussions with representatives from cultural organisations in the city.The empirical research is analysed in the political,economic and social contexts within which cultural policy is constituted.