UK Arts and Socal Change

Arts activity has an increasingly important role to play in social transformation in the UK. The role of arts and sport in achieving social inclusion was formally acknowledged in 1997 by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport Policy Action Team 10. Since then there have been policy initiatives recognising the role of culture in regeneration, community cohesion and civil renewal (see http://www.culture.gov.uk/3206.aspx)

There is a wide continuum of arts activity in the UK that achieves social change, which ranges from mainstream arts audience development with excluded people, to projects achieving purposeful and planned social outcomes with a wide range of people and communities who are experiencing poverty, disadvantage or discrimination.

At root is the transforming potential of the arts as part of the wider framework of culture which influences human values, beliefs and behaviour. Arts activity for social change empowers and enables people to explore ways of improving their quality of life, whether that is releasing the true potential of individuals or bringing communities together to celebrate or find solutions to shared problems.

Creative Exchange has been connecting up organisations, people and thinking in this area since 1997. It has developed a number of papers related to this field which can be downloaded below in Pdf formats.