Change? Decay? Promise? Fifty years of local government cultural services in the UK

This paper offers an assessment of how local government cultural services in the UK have transformed in the last fifty years. We frame our discussion around three questions: How should cultural services be funded? How should cultural services be delivered? And what are cultural services for? Drawing on published research and ongoing empirical work by the authors, we discuss how the ideological preferences of different political administrations have offered alternative responses to these three questions, creating a highly uncertain and challenging operating environment for these services. We close by reflecting on the future of cultural provision and by identifying questions for further research in this area.