(DOWNLOAD) "Culture Vs. Policy Vs. Culture: The Evolution of Cultural Policy in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1967-2007 (Essay)" by Newfoundland and Labrador Studies * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Culture Vs. Policy Vs. Culture: The Evolution of Cultural Policy in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1967-2007 (Essay)
- Author : Newfoundland and Labrador Studies
- Release Date : January 22, 2009
- Genre: Reference,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 396 KB
Description
IN 1967 THE GOVERNMENT of Newfoundland and Labrador hired John Perlin, the then 32-year-old son of an upper-class St. John's family, as the province's first Director of Cultural Affairs. For the next two decades he managed the St. John's Arts and Culture Centre, a Centennial Year project funded by the Federal government, and was the most powerful cultural bureaucrat in the province. As he recalled of his tenure, "we really didn't have a cultural policy. Whatever policies were in place ... were more by accident than design" (Interview 23 November 2007). Forty years later, the Province has an explicit cultural policy and is led by a political party that proclaims, "no resource is of greater value to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians than our distinctive culture" (Progressive Conservative Party of Newfoundland 2007). A Cultural Policy for Newfoundland and Labrador, published in 2002, commits the government to nurturing and preserving the province's culture, "for its intrinsic value, as well as for its social and economic benefits" (2002, 1). The present government's Blueprint for Development and Investment in Culture includes a message from the Premier asserting that if we "invest wisely" in our arts and heritage, "the benefits will be tremendous" (2006, 5). This essay outlines the province' s path from having no cultural policy in 1967, to a point 40 years later where it has an explicit cultural policy that identifies culture as a commodity. Borrowing a perspective from Richard Handler' s Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec this essay will ask, how have competing conceptualizations of culture both shaped and been shaped by government policy? (Handler 1988, 18). THE SMALLWOOD YEARS