The Changing Role of the Local State in UK Leisure Provision

In the UK the public sector has had a long history of both providing leisure opportunities and also regulating and encouraging activities of other agents through legislation, enforcement and subsidy. What we seek to do in this paper is to address some of the recent shifts in public sector operation so that readers can perform a comparative analysis with recent developments in their own nation state. Our basic argument is that the experience of the last two decades has been characterised by: i. a gradual fragmentation of the ‘leisure project’ ii. a growing instrumentalism in public policy which increasingly deploys leisure in order to secure wider social goals. iii. an invasive centralisation of policy and a reduction of the power of the local state. These processes are interrelated and are associated with a proliferation of more short term pragmatic policies. These in turn find expression in more centralised project funding and contracting arrangements. The shift away from traditional leisure policy and towards a contract culture was centrally driven in the UK by iconoclastic neoliberalist policies. They were the hallmark of Margaret Thatcher’s years of governance (1979-1990) .This policy direction has been continued, arguably refined and sharpened, by the three successive ‘New Labour’ governments of Tony Blair (1997-2006)

Joining up policy discourses and fragmented practices: The precarious contribution of cultural projects to social inclusion?

This article outlines New Labour's policy discourse about social exclusion and the confusing challenge it poses to local cultural projects. Government now demands hard evidence to measure the impact of cultural projects on performance indicators such as education, employment, crime and health. However, community-based workers are hard pressed to collect valid and reliable data that evaluate projects against clear criteria for social inclusion. This article outlines possible criteria for social inclusion. Then, drawing on data collected from two 'Arts in Health' projects, we examine how contributions to social inclusion might have been effected. Considerable energy is required to form new alliances and health partnerships to resolve the dilemmas posed by a confused policy discourse and by fragile funding streams. © The Policy Press, 2006

Leisure studies education: Historical trends and pedagogical futures in the United Kingdom and beyond

This paper is an attempt to stimulate debate about the decline of leisure studies and the rise of courses and subject fields defined by sport, events, tourism management. It is argued that although this decline has happened, there are two possible futures for a re-purposed leisure studies that would ensure its survival

Count Me In: The dimensions of social inclusion through culture and sport

This study was set up to examine claims made for the ability of cultural projects to promote social inclusion (cultural projects are here taken to include those incorporating sport, the arts, media, heritage and outdoor adventure). This was to be achieved primarily by collecting evidence from a sample of 14 projects selected from some 200 that had volunteered their services. The report to the government’s Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) from the Policy Action Team (PAT10) (1999)2 noted the potential. In his foreword, Chris Smith (then Secretary of State for the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS)) wrote: “… art and sport can not only make a valuable contribution to delivering key outcomes of lower long term unemployment, less crime, better health and better qualifications, but can also help to develop the individual pride, community spirit and capacity for responsibility that enable communities to run regeneration programmes themselves”. Similar statements have followed from other politicians, particularly in the recent Commons debate on sport and social exclusion (22/11/01), and again in the public health debate (13/12/01). However, the PAT 10 report also came to the same conclusion as previous commentators (e.g. Glyptis, 19893; Allison & Coalter, 19964; Long & Sanderson, 19985) that there is little ‘hard’ evidence of the social benefits that accrue