Queen Mary has long played a central role in advocating for London’s cultural landscape, extending back to its origins as the People’s Palace in 1887. In May 2022, Arts and Culture and the Mile End Institute launched a unique three-year scheme, establishing a coalition of advocates helping to make the case for the arts and cultural sectors in London and nationally.
Our Fellows have been appointed for a three-year period to work with Queen Mary academics to tackle some of the major challenges facing the cultural sector. They will benefit from Mile End Institute’s cutting-edge approach to policy at local and national levels, and the QM Arts and Culture Team’s networks of support for Queen Mary’s work with the cultural sector.
This event asked: against the backdrop of rising inequality and the inequalities within the cultural sector itself: what unexpected solutions, approaches, policies have been effective as interventions, and why? The event responded to the Levelling Up white paper to think about local and regional inequalities, asking how arts and culture can offer unexpected solutions to, for example, health inequalities or criminal justice issues, while also focussing on inequalities within the arts and culture sector itself in conditions of work and pay. The event focused on how unexpected solutions might lead to policy change a locally, nationally and internationally – exploring new approaches, possibilities, and transformations in ‘making the case’ for the cultural sector.
Read more on the conference here.
In an article for Arts Professional, Dr Molly McPhee discusses the scope of future work for the Cultural Advocacy Fellows, 'Don't level up or down - remove barriers', 23 November 2022.