British Cultural Policy and Strategy: Arts Council’s projects

This paper aims to examine the vision and projects of the British Arts Council, presenting a comparison with – and subsequent analysis of – project development in Korea. This paper begins by defining the direction of British culture and art by analysing the ‘Arm’s length principle’, which is a fundamental policy element in British culture and art. Following this, our gaze shifts to consider the British Art Council’s future strategy, the projects it plans to undertake, and the goals it hopes to achieve. In particular, we examine the British Art Council’s aim to inform the public on several topics and plan events that include various genres of music, visual arts, folklore and archaeology, as well as its approach to revitalizing a region of England using the works of local artists in the example of the 2022 Commonwealth Games Culture Festival held in Birmingham. In the third chapter, we discuss the Bristol Regional Project and the Greenwich Library Project in depth, explaining the British Arts Council’s approach to collaborating with the fields of education, history, literature and archaeology, art experts (including curators, creative directors, planners, professors, and so on), and public institutions to successfully develop and complete projects. By analysing the cases of the Bristol Regional Project and Greenwich Library Project, we aim to determine whether these projects are consistent with the vision and future strategy set by the British Arts Council, as well as how these projects have developed and altered British society and the art world more broadly. In addition to local projects, the British Arts Council intends to work abroad to discover new artists and to promote British art through them to facilitate its growth, which will also be a point of discussion in Chapter 3. The final chapter will examine projects conducted by the Seoul Cultural Foundation during the COVID-19 period. Making a comparison to the UK’s regional culture and arts policies and programs, the limitations of the Korean domestic art landscape are discussed and areas that need to be re-established are identified.