Education and Research Session 2022
Chairs Ana Gaio, City, University of London, United Kingdom, and Richard Maloney, New York University, United States
Track related to the Research Interest Cluster (RIC) “Global Conversations on Cultural Management and Policy Education”
Many will agree that Cultural Management and Policy (CMP) is not only a young subject but is also an evolving and dynamic one, the popularity of which has exponentially increased in universities across the globe in the past 20 years. Not only have the scope and range of the topics explored gradually expanded but the discipline has also significantly developed as a field of research in its own right. These developments have supported the consolidation of CMP as a discipline and, critically, its institutionalisation in academia.
This expansion has expressed itself in different ways, from what are broadly speaking CMP curricula but with distinct outcomes depending on the lens used (eg cultural management, cultural policy, cultural studies, cultural economics, creative industries and permutations thereof), the theory/practice focus or the faculties where they nest (arts, social sciences, business schools); to the (cultural) frames of reference, local cultural ecosystems, politics and political economies that inevitably shape curricula. Moreover, cultural space notwithstanding, many if not most cultural management and policy courses will claim to be international – which the pandemic-induced awakening of Higher Education institutions (HEIs) to digital education, student inequality/ies or epistemic justice has further compounded.
In this context of evolution, expansion and global growth of what is, by its very nature, a cultural subject, this is a good time to consider the factors that are currently shaping the field and appraise its ‘direction/s of travel’. This track aims to spark global conversations about the key themes and patterns that are emerging in our CMP subject around the globe. We invite contributions (including research papers, a conversation/interview, poster presentations, teaching workshops, panel proposals) on topics including (but not necessarily limited to) the following:
- What emphases, concerns or directions do we observe in CMP programmes, for example, in terms of content, interdisciplinarities, key skills and competencies, values.
- Can we speak of a core corpus of knowledge in CMP? If so, what are the foundational concepts and practices that it comprises? To what extent has CMP become codified as a discipline?
- What does ‘internationalisation’ mean? What are the factors shaping internationalised CMP curricula in HEIs, for example, is international in European HEIs the same as international in East/South-East Asia or Australasia?
- How is epistemic justice shaping CPM curricula? Crucially, how are the theoretical gaps between Western canons (social-, cultural theory, governance frameworks, management theory) and the realities of local ecosystem being bridged? To what extent are Western canons being deployed, interrogated, complemented or even rejected?
- What kinds of pedagogies, learning and teaching approaches, digital or hybrid, are being deployed to bring about effective education in the field and a meaningful experience for students? For example, how is employability being catered for? What can we learn from educational practice in other disciplines, traditions and/or epistemic spaces?