One of the key foci of research and research-informed teaching at the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies has been ‘creativity’ – who decides whether it is important and in what forms it takes, who gets to develop it and how, where it can be accessed and what kinds of creativity drive success and economic growth. So, we are delighted to see Dr Heidi Ashton’s research on arts education and culture in England, which she says has witnessed the emergence of two ‘systems’ of investment, appearing in The Guardian this week.

Heidi Ashton & David Ashton (2022) ‘Creativity and the curriculum: educational apartheid in 21st Century England, a European outlier?’ in the International Journal of Cultural Policy explores how ‘the state has progressively marginalised the role of the arts in the public education system in the belief that the “market” does not value the arts’ and ‘explores the extent to which the top private schools have diverged from this process of marginalisation.’

Such research is vital for educators and policymakers for understanding how culture is invested in and by whom, who benefits, and whether English arts education is producing the creativity that all governments argue is important for innovation.

We are also delighted to see that four of the top five most read articles in the International Journal of Cultural Policy last year (2022) were from Centre researchers.