Origins of the Arts Council Movement

Anna Rosser Upchurch is Lecturer in Cultural Policy at the University of Leeds, UK. After a career in arts management and policy in the United States working for a range of publicly and privately funded organisations, she earned a PhD in cultural policy studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She is co-editor of Humanities in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Utility and Markets (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), with Eleonora Belfiore, and her research interests include the historiography and theory of cultural policy, the history of ideas about the arts and humanities in society, including issues of ‘value’ and ‘impact’, and histories of women activists in cultural organisations.

• Introduction. What is the ‘arts council movement’?.- 1.Philanthropists and Policy Advisors.- 2.The Ideologies of English Intellectualism and of American Philanthropy.- 3.Arts policy during the second world war in the United Kingdom.- 4.The Arts Council of Great Britain: Keynes’s Legacy.- 5.The Canadian Clerisy and the Canada Council.- 6.The Local Arts Council Movement in the United States.- Conclusion