Publisher's Synopsis
In recent years, the arts world has sought to defend its corner in terms that tend to be untenable, while free marketeers have argued with increasing confidence that support for art and culture is best left to the market place. Justin Lewis suggests that the questions we should address is rather different: what of cultural value is the free market unable to provide? In so doing he confronts the issue of cultural and artistic values head on, and attempts to rescue cultural values from definitions that are elitist, unjust, and increasingly irrelevant. His assessment includes popular commercial art forms as well as more fine arts and also appraises the community arts and cultural industries approaches to arts funding. He draws examples from specific venues all over Britain, showing how innovative projects work in practice.
