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The national trust for talent? NESTA and New Labour’s cultural policy

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British Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

Although the New Labour period witnessed a high degree of institutional formation in the United Kingdom, many of its initiatives, from regional development agencies to the Film Council, have not survived. One exception is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA). Using interviews and unpublished documentation, this article traces the pre-history of NESTA, its origins as an idea in the last years of the Major administration, the policy networks that helped develop it and its realisation under New Labour. The argument is that by examining the trajectory of NESTA, we can see many of the themes of New Labour’s cultural policy, particularly what came to be thought of as its ‘creative economy’ policy, under which an early enthusiasm for supporting small cultural businesses was replaced by the discourse of creativity and innovation, progressively emptying the policy of its concerns with culture in favour of a focus on economic growth.

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Notes

  1. NESTA is now known as Nesta, a change coterminous with its shift to charitable status, but as the article deals with the period up to 2010, we have retained the original acronym.

  2. The article does not address NESTA’s development under the Coalition Government of 2010 onwards.

  3. These include Geoff Mulgan, Rory Coonan, Jeremy Newton, Jon Kingsbury, Hasan Bakhshi, Chris Smith, David Puttnam, Jonathan Kestenbaum and Christopher Frayling. The interviews were conducted as part of an AHRC-funded research project examining Cultural Policy under New Labour.

  4. The name given to the Lottery distributor created by the 1998 Act, which disbursed funds to health, education and environmental projects.

  5. Interview with Rory Coonan.

  6. Coonan anticipated that Parliament would in due time pass an amendment to the ‘GOSH anomaly’ legislation to bring other time-limited income-earning IP into the ambit of ‘extinct’ copyright extension beyond 50/70 years after the ‘author’s’ life. The plan would have required the seeking of a derogation from EU rules. In terms of active rights, the idea was that UK copyright owners might also ‘gift’ active rights under their control in some way proportional to the benefit they had received from NESTA.

  7. The National Trust is a conservation organisation, primarily funded by membership subscriptions, which looks after a large portfolio of historic buildings and natural environments.

  8. Interview with John Newbigin.

  9. ibid.

  10. Interview with Geoff Mulgan.

  11. Interview with Jeremy Newton.

  12. ibid.

  13. ibid.

  14. ibid.

  15. Interview with Christopher Frayling.

  16. Interview with Chris Powell.

  17. Interview with Jonathan Kestenbaum.

  18. Interview with Hasan Bakhshi.

  19. Interview with Jon Kingsbury.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Kate Oakley, David Hesmondhalgh & David Lee

  2. Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London, 334N Norfolk Building, Strand Campus, London, WC2R 2LS, UK

    Melissa Nisbett

Authors
  1. Kate Oakley
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  2. David Hesmondhalgh
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  3. David Lee
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  4. Melissa Nisbett
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Correspondence to Kate Oakley.

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Oakley, K., Hesmondhalgh, D., Lee, D. et al. The national trust for talent? NESTA and New Labour’s cultural policy. Br Polit 9, 297–317 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2013.34

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