This is the third article for a research project enquiring into the possible role of art and culture in policymaking. The previous article described what policies are, and argued that policies matter. This piece looks at:
How policies are made, from the policymaker perspective;
How policies are made, from a system / process perspective;
What role art may play in that process, if any?
The third question in particular necessitates looking at definitions of art and culture, complementing the definitions of policy from the last blog.
How policies are made: policymaker perspective
In 1820 the French positivist philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon said of his proposed new political order based on scientific reason:
All the questions which have to be debated in such a political system... are eminently positive and answerable; the correct decisions can only be the result of scientific demonstrations, absolutely independent of all human will
- de Saint-Simon 1820/1975, quoted in Institute for Government (2011), p. 80
How policies are made: perspective of the policymaker - credit: Kimbell, L (2013) (illustration by Holly Macdonald), p9
Nearly two hundred years later Lucy Kimbell, after interviewing people involved in the production of policies, produced an analysis of how policy is actually made today, viscerally illustrated by Holly MacDonald (see image).
The illustration shows the pressures and influences on policymakers: parliament, business, the Prime Minister, experts, academia, pressure groups, constituents, the media, and so on. The pressure is amplified by the single message on the computer screen: HURRY UP!
The image correlates with the concept of ‘bounded rationality’ that Professor Paul Cairney uses in his analysis of policymaking (and specifically the role that science and evidence might play). This is the notion that there are limits on what information policymakers can realistically process and incorporate into a policy decision - especially given the ‘unusually strong and constant pressures on [policymakers’] cognition and emotion’.
As a result, policymakers are just like normal people in using ‘short cuts’ to gather information to make decisions, including:
The ‘rational’, by pursuing clear goals and prioritising certain kinds of information, and the ‘irrational’, by drawing on emotions, gut feelings, values, beliefs, habits and the familiar, to make decisions quickly
- Cairney and Kwiatkowski (2017)
In summary, policymaking is informed by evidence, yes, but also the values, emotions, hopes, fears, dreams, experiences, and so on, of policymakers. Most people would agree that art acts on such values, emotions, hopes and dreams. We’ll get further into the effects of art below, but first we must develop our understanding of how policy is made.
How policies are made: system / process perspective
The bottom of Kimbell/MacDonald’s policymaker illustration shows three stages of activity: 1) analyse, 2) generate options, 3) recommend. This highlights stages in a process or system of policymaking. Thinking about the policymaking process is helpful for two reasons:
It provides a less monolithic view of policymaking, allowing greater insight into the multiple ways that art or culture might play a role;
It broadens the focus from beyond the ‘policymaker’ to other actors in the system.
The Policy Cycle - Cairney, P (2013)
The ‘policy cycle’ is a well-established model for describing how policy on a given topic goes through different stages, conceptually at least. HM Treasury describes this process in the Green Book on the appraisal and evaluation of policies (page 15), whilst Cairney provides a slightly more intuitive version (see image).
The diagram indicates that the policy process is circular and never-ending. If there is a starting point, it is likely towards the top, where either an existing policy is adjudged to be unsuccessful (including the absence of measures), or a problem is identified as requiring government attention.
The next stages include:
Policy formulation, such as setting objectives, assessing options, costing;
Legitimation, i.e. ensuring the chosen policy instruments have support (whether legislative, executive, popular...);
Implementation, including tasking and resourcing an organisation to deliver the policy.
The cycle then loops back onto itself, with further evaluation and decisions about policy maintenance, succession or termination.
Whilst the policy cycle model does give a more nuanced breakdown of the policymaking process, it is still criticised for being overly simplistic and is now rivalled by other theories of policymaking such as the Multiple Streams Analysis and Punctuated Equilibrium Theory. However, it is useful in this research project partly because it is a foundational theory, and partly because policymakers, including those interviewed in this project, frequently reference the policy cycle model and often organise their thoughts or actions according to a version of it.
What is art (v. quickly)?
I defined ‘policy’ in the previous blog; to understand the role that art and culture might play in policy, it is now time to consider those tricky terms. First, François Matarasso helps tease apart ‘art’ and ‘culture’:
Culture may be understood as how people do the things that they need to do to live and prosper: culture adds meaning (value) to what needs to be done. It is largely unconscious because everyday life would become impossible if we had to stop and ask ourselves about the cultural significance of the sandwich or underwear: we’d never get anything done. Art, on the other hand, tries precisely to stop us, to invite us to become conscious of what we’re thinking, feeling and doing
- Matarasso, F. Parliament of Dreams (2013)
In summary: “art is a toolbox that enables human beings to interfere with their culture”. From this point onwards, this research project focuses directly on the role of ‘art’ in this sense, and only indirectly on the broader concept of culture.
Belfiore and Bennett (2008) describe how the millennia-old debate over ‘what is art’ coalesced, since the 1960s, around ‘functionalism’ and ‘proceduralism’. The former tries to identify the functional properties possessed by artworks, i.e. what art does. In this light, another passage from Matarasso is helpful:
[Art] uses sophisticated techniques [...] to produce intellectual and emotional effects through which it aims to communicate values, ideas and feelings [...] Perhaps most importantly art can question, re-imagine, undermine, critique and dream about existing values and meanings
- Matarasso, F. Parliament of Dreams (2013)
This articulation of certain effects of art is helpful for two reasons. First, we can draw a connection to Cairney and Kwiatkowski earlier quoted passage about how policies are made, including the role of values and emotions, and draw out the following logic chain for how art might inform policy:
A chain establishing a logic for art informing policy (credit: the author)
Second, we can start elaborating on some of these effects or ‘functions’ of art, and map them to the policy cycle. An exhaustive, definitive list must, surely, be impossible. Instead, perhaps it is productive to consider some effects of art relevant for the specific context of policymaking? This is my attempt at such a list:
SOME THINGS THAT ART CAN DO (THAT ARE RELEVANT TO POLICY):
COGNITIVE IMPACT
Art can raise awareness of issues and provide information which otherwise people may not have found or be aware of. The image is the BBC drama The Salisbury Poisonings, but this could equally apply to reportage photography, sci-art and portraits of rulers, disseminated to their subjects.
Emotional impact
From Medea (pictured) to Guernica to Blue Planet II, artworks have long been cited as enacting a strong emotional force upon people who engage with them. Plato was worried about the impact of poetry and drama on normal people, and envisioned using such art only for the good of the state in Republic.
VISIONS OF ALTERNATIVES TO THE STATUS QUO
From News from Nowhere, William Morris’ utopian vision of a future green London (pictured), to ‘speculative design’, to Black Mirror, to Kenneth Williams, artists have created interventions which open up the space for alternatives to the status quo.
multi-sensory experience
Artworks provide visual, physical, kinaesthetic, aural, haptic (and so on) interpretations of an idea or issue. Olafur Eliasson put glaciers on the street for people to touch, Wesley Goatley’ turned air pollution data into light, sound and water mist and the UN have used VR to bring people a multi-sensory experience of refugee camps in Clouds Over Sidra (pictured).
dialogical space
Artworks can provide a framing for dialogue and discussion. For example, art in the ‘relational aesthetics’ tradition, including by Carston Holler, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Liam Gillick (pictured), create space and time for people to engage and interact. (The eagle-eyed may recognise the aesthetic of Gillick’s Discussion Bench Platform from the UK Home Office building, for which the artist was a design consultant.)
Agency to act
From Meow Wolf to 7,000 Oaks, artists can create the urge, and sense of agency to act on an issue. The image is of Cardboard Citizens, whose participatory theatre, made with and for homeless people and created in the tradition of the ‘theatre of the oppressed’, aims to ‘activate change’.
No doubt there will be omissions and disagreements about this list - I would love to hear your ideas - but hopefully it can provide a useful starting point to now think: what do these functions mean for policy?
The art-policy matrix
By comparing the stages of the policy cycle to the above set of things that art can do, we create a 2 x 2 matrix of roles that art can play across the policy process:
A matrix framework for considering some effects of art (columns, described top), across stages of the policy cycle (rows, described left) (credit: the author)
Next steps for this research
The main next stage of this research is to work through 3-4 case studies of artistic interventions relevant to policy, to consider their fit with the matrix, and then to reflect that insight back into the framework. Other steps include:
Further analysing the interviews of policymakers, artists and practitioners to understand whether their perspectives fit into this matrix;
Continuing to make artwork to enable the next, experiential phase of the research (see latest work-in-progress, below), to test some of the intersections between the effects of art and the policy cycle, i.e. some of the grid squares in the above matrix...
Work-in-progress artwork to explore the use of art in policy through an experiential approach (image credit: the author)
Please check out the research project home page here; and/or contact me via mail, twitter or Instagram with your thoughts on this subject.